An internationally recognised masterpiece, Fallingwater is as close to the ground and nature as architecturally possible. Built over a waterfall and with the bedrock it was anchored to rising up through the living room floor, it belongs inexorably to the Appalachian landscape it adorns. Since it was handed over to the care of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1963 and reopened as a museum the following year, some five million visitors have driven out to this remote Pennsylvanian home at Bear Run, 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, to marvel at the building that re-ignited Wright’s career.

In situ

This highly original and beautiful mountain retreat was commissioned by Edgar J Kaufmann, a wealthy Pittsburgh department store proprietor and his wife – also his first cousin – Liliane Kaufmann who did much to bring chic Parisian couture to the American Midwest. Kaufmann had thought of a house overlooking the waterfall at Bear Run, but Wright insisted, “I want you to live with the waterfall, not just to look at it.”