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Fallingwater is falling down. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever doubted the structural stability of one of the world's most beautiful and enchanting houses, designed as a weekend family home by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The house, built on an outcrop of rock over a waterfall at Bear Run deep in the Pennsylvanian forest, was completed in 1939. But the integrity of its dramatic construction - the three floors are huge concrete cantilevers thrust out over the waterfall from a sandstone core - was in question even before its owners moved in. Seven decades on, it is giving real cause for concern.
I remember seeing a rhyme in a cafe on Pennsylvania's Route 381, which passes close by Wright's domestic masterpiece. It went something along the lines of: "Frank Lloyd Wright built a house over falling water/which he really shouldn't have oughta." But nobody was going to tell Wright that back in 1935, when he turned up at Bear Run and sketched out a home for Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann in a matter of moments. He was never less than impetuous.
His clients must have had the patience of saints. The Kaufmanns were big-time Pittsburgh store owners. They had often driven out to picnic at Bear Run and dreamed of living there. A normal house in the area would have been a grand, two-storey timber cabin complete with moose heads on the walls. It might stand beside a river, but never on top of one. You can almost hear the contractors saying: "You sure we've got the damp-proof courses right, Mr Wright?"
FLW was always right. His was a monstrous ego, and therein lay his genius and his downfall. Or Fallingwater's downfall. Many of his buildings have given trouble. Wright...