No house should ever be built on any hill or on anything. It should be of that hill, so hill and house could live together each the happier for the o

While we were off for the Thanksgiving holiday, I ventured out among the hoards on "Black Friday" weekend, but not for any sales, and not at 5 in the morning! Instead, my wife and I paid a visit to the beautiful Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania and visited one of my favorite places on earth - Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, Fallingwater.

Fallingwater was built as a summer home for Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann and their son, Edgar Jr., on property they owned on Bear Run Creek, which they frequented as an escape from the rather oppressive industrial environment of their native Pittsburgh. They owned Kaufmann's department store - familiar to anyone who lived in our area and is now merged with Macy's. It must have come as a shock to the Kaufmanns when they first laid eyes on Wright's plans for the site; they had asked him to incorporate the vista of the 30-foot waterfalls on the property into the plan, but Wright took it a step further. Fitting perfectly with Wright's love for the synthesis of nature and design, he placed the home directly over the falls themselves!

His revolutionary approach was guided by his interest in incorporating the sound and the cooling nature of the waterfalls into the floor plan while building the structure using local materials and craftsmen (talk about a "green" approach to building!). Needless to say, the Kaufmanns were a bit put off by the concept, but to their credit they accepted it with little revision and lived on the site for almost thirty years. It was finished in 1936, a guesthouse was added in 1939, and it is preserved today in pristine condition, with much of the original furniture and artwork. In fact, it is the only publicly accessible original design by Wright that is preserved with its intended environment and interior completely intact.

Almost everyone knows the look of Fallingwater, with its emphasis on outdoor spaces enhanced by the use of gravity-defying cantilevers and the use of windows as walls in wide open floor plans that are designed to encourage residents to spend as much time as possible in the open air rather than in the somewhat cramped personal spaces. What you can't really understand without visiting it is the music-like presence of the sound of moving water throughout the space. Wright has created an aural masterpiece that one cannot help but find relaxing and meditative. In a time before the infusion of electronic stimulation and in a valley that was inaccessible to radio signals of the day, Fallingwater must have been the ultimate retreat and rejuvenation spot. It's no wonder that much of the wall space indoors is filled with bookshelves. If you add in the visual stimulus offered by the use of windows throughout the structure, it's almost like a temple to nature, with the entire focus on the gifts that are provided for us if we are quiet and wait with open ears and eyes.

As an added bonus, the few spaces that are taken up with natural stone walls rather than windows display original works by Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, and other famous artists of the period. The Kaufmann family felt it was critical that the art they selected for the house should remain for the public as well - a real treat for those of us who only get to see such works in the rarified air of a museum.

It's impossible to come away from Fallingwater without a sense of a time and a point of view lost to our modern world. Too often, the approach today is to make the structure the entire focus and to give little thought to a more holistic orientation. We build homes that feature "entertainment" in every room and sprawl across a landscape in a way that encourages us to stay indoors and pay little attention to our greater environment. I bet the first thing some folks think when seeing Wright's masterpiece is "the bedrooms are cramped, the living space is too open, and the pathways are too complicated." But step out on a patio, or open a window, or just sit quietly, and you'll get it. Nature is our original orchestra - it's a gift that can be given, but cannot truly be owned. But it sometimes takes real genius to point this out in such a sublime way.

I recommend you visit Fallingwater if you haven't already. It's less than a 4 hour drive from Cleveland, and there are many other wonders in the area to enjoy when you go, including another Frank Lloyd Wright house open to the public right up the street - Kentuck Knob. There is a great website you can visit to learn more - www.fallingwater.org. But don't forget to listen.