America's Favorite Architecture

I cant understand why this is not further up on the list. One of the first designs in America to combine architecture with the environment in a beautiful and successful way. A truly unique work of art.

Wright's incredible legacy of design and beauty has inspired me thruout my life to build and create...
Be sure to go see this treasure.

I think this building would be higher on the list if the public knew more about it. Understandably, the top projects are those with the greatest exposure and public presence. This explains why most are in the nation's capital and urban environments.
Falling Water is fairly remote. One has to make a concerted pilgramage to visit it. I certainly plan to some day.

This shouldn't be on the list and the AIA should disavow all knowledge of the architectural abortion that is Frank Lloyd Wright.

This specific skid mark was designed in under an hour and had to be rebuilt many times by real architects and engineers.

creo que por la excelencia que contempla esta obra tendria que haber estado entre los primeros puestos ya que es una de las mejores del mundo...

I waited 25 years to make the pilgramige to my "Mecca". My advice - go there take the tour and realize this is a treasure. Anybody calling it a skidmark should have to spend the rest of thier lives in a southern california track house with no yard.

Truly stunning structure. I could have spent all day there. Easily worth the trouble to see.

I've never understood why Wright's work is so highly praised. I agree with JSW: much of Wright's work was imaginative, but at the expense of solidity, longevity, and even purpose. The repair and upkeep costs on his work are consistently stratospheric--"costly and intensive", indeed. Credit should go to those people who are managing to keep his shoddy buildings from collapsing. Perhaps Wright should be seen as an unconventional builder of temporary housing, rather than as America's greatest architect.

This building is the single most creative work of art I have ever witnessed. Pictures of it serves as much as a picture of an actor playing Hamlet or three bars from a symphony. It must be seen in person.

I spent my tour there thinking "This is impossible. I am in the impossible." The walls, the terraces, the windows, the everything. Having been intimately familiar with a number of his Wisconsin homes, having toured other buildings, and having studied him for some time, I arrived thinking that Wright couldn't amaze me any more than he already had, I left realizing I knew nothing about the man.

I hate to waste time on the detractors, but, here I go: kids, you don't have to like him, but you have to respect him. Look around: every building built since WW2 is a reaction to him. Saying Wright was nothing is like saying the Beatles were nothing: your efforts to detract them only makes you sound like a fool.
Stuff like this generally comes out of resentment and jealousy. "I am not powerful, so I must destroy those who are."

Destroying Wright does not make you more powerful or important or even particularly attractive. I imagine that the look on people's faces who talk to you is generally in the neighborhood of tedium due to your noisy opinions.

If you want so much to tear someone down, how about this: give an argument why he deserves to be disappeared from existence. That's what healthy discourse is for. You can't just say: "Wright stinks like poop!" and feel superior. Come on, throw us at least a trite "leaky-roof" argument. How about a boring old character attack (not the best father, wouldn't pay debts, etc.). Every detraction you throw my way, I can throw back a dozen amazing things he did, and maybe even come up with another detraction, just for sport.

Or how 'bout this summer you take a trip out to Fallingwater. When you go, wear a diaper, because the combination of awe (for the building) and disappointment (for your thankfully destroyed smug pseudo-intellect)will make you wet yourself.

Go off now, child. Pick on someone your own size. I hear that there's a woodtick with a broken leg around here. Get him!

Is Fallingwater structurally fragile? Apparently. Is Wright a "love him or hate him" kind of charater? Sure. Was this building really designed in an hour? Ultimately, who cares?

I went to Fallingwater for the first time several years ago. I'm not particularly educated in the ways of fine art or architecture, but it didn't matter: I was completely taken with the beauty and emotional impact of the place. It is an extraordinary accomplishment.

To be moved, inspired and educated is what we look for in great art, right? What a place....

Another case of "You absolutely must experience it in person."

Yep, the house has a history of problems. Chronic roof leaks as already mentioned. "Liveability" issues (such as if you don't like Wright's cave-like low-ceiling spaces, or his notion of dictating how you will "use" his house, even though you are the client.) The bigger issue of the design's demands placed on reinforced concrete---demands which ultimately proved too much, necessitating the tremendously expensive recent repairs. (Partly so expensive, because the solution to the problem had to remain invisible to all visitors.)

Despite this, a visit to the house is a pure joy in itself, and worth the trek to get there.

As to the earlier comment of the house, or any of Wright's buildings, costing too much in maintenance... A visit to the #3 structure on this list reveals that it currently requires an annual budget of $1,000 PER HOUR, 24 hrs a day, 365 days per year, to maintain and operate. The investment in Fallingwater's post-tensioning repairs will ensure the building stands for years to come; yet nobody says, for instance, that Wells Cathedral should be disregarded as "a skid mark" because the design required later generations to add the now-famous scissor arches to prevent the cathedral's (second) collapse.

On this one, I have to agree with the AIA membership: Best All-Time Work.

Anytime.

Anywhere.