Title: Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater Visit
Preparation: Address: 1491 Mill Run Rd, Mill Run, PA 15464 Fallingwater is a house designed by the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935, as a vacation home for Edgar Kaufmann family. The main house and guest house were built in 1936 - 1939. It is in southwest Pennsylvania, about 70 miles (110 km) southeast of Pittsburgh. It is built partly over a waterfall. Fallingwater is a UNESCO site. Tickets: You may need to book the ticket online at least more than a month in advance if you'd like to get into the house due to the limited capacity. Price about $34 / per person We booked the ground pass tickets 2 days in advance, which were available on our planned visit day. Each hour has the maximum number of visitors limit. I believe that people would like to enter the house and look at the indoor decoration if the tickets are available. Different type of ticket has a different price: 1. regular visitor ticket: you can enter the indoor, with tour guilde, about 1 hour: $34 /person 2. Ground ticket: $17 / Person ( 15 + $2 processing fee), grounds and exterior access, not allowed to indoor rooms. 3. In depth guided tour $75 / Person, today I see $85. Open Time: Daily, except Wednesdays, Easter Morning and Thanksgiving 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mar 5th - Nov 27th Children younger than 6 not permitted. Family Field Trip: $30 / person two person minimum Tuesdays and Thursdays 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Mar 8th - Nov 22nd Maximum group size of six. Free for children younger than 6 Prices may vary when time passes by.
General opinion: It's absolutely worth visiting. Frank Lloyd Wright is the greatest and most famous architect in America in 20th century. His design principles: the house fits in the environment, called organic design. Buildings, houses are in harmony with the natural environments. In his own words, from an interview in 1957: "I’d like to have a free architecture. I’d like to have an architecture that belongs to where you see it standing, and it's a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace. ..." Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater, which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture" Fallingwater is representing Wright's original design and idea.
Attractions and activities: Bridge: from here, you can see the house is a stack of cantilevered concrete trays, designed to hover above Bear Run. Entrance: used compression and release concepts in the design, that means, I guess entering a narrow way and then seeing a very open space. East Terrace: you can peer into the open plan of the living room. I liked very much the living room ceiling with a few big rectangle glasses in the flat roof , thus the living room is full of natural light. The living room has all the glass windows and make people feel they are in the nature, blurring the lines between the indoors and outdoors. Pottery Terrace Main House: All the glass windows are low and linear, which makes people feel that the inside and the outside flow together. When people sit inside, the low windows make the continuing horizontal view through tree tops and feel truly living in the nature. Guest House: we only visited the outside patio, it is very simple and nice. From the outside of the windows, we see the guest house has a very nice, cozy media or meeting room with a very unique lighting, benches. Swimming pool Two Colors Wright used often are: light ochre for the concrete; Cherokee red for the steel. I feel these two colors really fit into the natural environment.
Dining: There is a Fallingwater cafe in vistor center. We had a quick glance at the menu, about $18 / person.
Commute: The Fallingwater parking lot has enough space for parking when we arrived there.
Things I wish I had known before: We should have booked the tickets at least more than a month earlier to get the indoor visit tickets.
