“Fallingwater: Living With and In Art,” edited by Justin Gunther and Scott W. Perkins (Rizzoli, March 2025).
In 1935, Frank Lloyd Wright designed what would become his triumph in organic architecture. Towering above the waterfalls of Bear Run, in southwestern Pennsylvania, Fallingwater is a dramatic response to the natural world, as evidenced by its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Now, the international treasure is also the subject of an upcoming book published by Rizzoli.
Fallingwater: Living With and In Art weaves a rich narrative about Wright’s masterpiece. It unearths Fallingwater’s origins as a weekend getaway for Edgar Kaufmann Sr., his wife, Liliane Kaufmann, and their son, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., a wealthy family that owned Pittsburgh’s largest department store. Given the family’s love of nature, Wright designed Fallingwater “to the music of the stream,” allowing the home to cascade off the cliffs as if also rushing forward like the surrounding waterfalls.
Wright’s naturalistic forms extend to every corner of Fallingwater. The home’s interiors embrace stone, wood, and other local materials, while simultaneously emphasizing handwork and craftsmanship. The home’s stone floors flow with the same meandering pace of a river, its asymmetrical composition reminiscent of light bouncing off water. Grand windows also offer views of the scenery, diminishing the separation between the built and natural environment.
These stunning details, among others, are all captured in Fallingwater: Living With and In Art. The book boasts impressive large-scale photographs, each of which encourages deep study of the home’s curving angles, bold hanging balconies, and handsome materials.
Beyond its exterior architecture, the book invites readers into the home itself, cataloging Fallingwater’s intimate nested rooms and the vast array of furniture found within. Decorative objects range from sculptures from ancient India and Native American basketry to Peruvian blankets and Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Since opening to the public in 1964, the home’s decor has remained intact, faithful to the vision of its original residents and architect.
“The house is celebrated as an astonishing feat of engineering, as an unexcelled integration between a building and its site, and above all as a sculpture one can actually enter,” Glenn Adamson writes in the book’s foreword. “To stand inside Fallingwater is to inhabit a space of breathtaking possibility.”
Fallingwater: Living With and In Art will be published in March 2025 and is currently available for preorder via Bookshop and Rizzoli’s website.
Published by Rizzoli, Fallingwater: Living With and In Art is the newest book to explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece in southwestern Pennsylvania.
The book showcases Fallingwater’s bold and dramatic architecture, inspired by the home’s surrounding environment.
Replete with stunning large-scale images, the book offers a comprehensive narrative about Fallingwater, exploring everything from its origins to its current status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Fallingwater: Living With and In Art is slated to publish in March 2025, and is currently available for preorder.
