Fallingwater is Frank Lloyd Wright's masterwork in the southwestern Pennsylvania hill country, his in-your-face-slam dunk response to the European Modernists of the time. Built on top of a waterfall instead of where the client wanted it, it is purest Wright -- arrogant, showy and subtle somehow at the same time, understructured and leaky, a bad idea and a great one at the same time, way over-budget, beautiful in it's conception and built by sheer willpower. This project made the cover of Time magazine before it was even finished, and jump-started Wright's prolific 'second career' at age 67.
We learned that, far from the pristine natural site that it appears to be, the Bear Run environs had been used rather badly by settlers for over a century, The conservation society which now owns the place has done a tremendous amount of restoration of the forests in the area.
