Legions of owners install a backyard waterfall just to hear the sound of murmuring water when they need to relax. Others obtain an artificial waterfall, which is a kind of a trinket made of miniature rocks and running water that is placed on a table. All of these owners would be green with envy to learn that near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a house is built over a real waterfall, in the heart of nature.

Let’s go back in time to the 1930s. Edgar Kaufmann, a prosperous businessman from the region, invites Frank Lloyd Wright to his home. At some point, America’s most famous architect tells the host’s son, who is studying architecture, that his parents deserved a much better home than the one they currently lived in.

At the time, the Kaufmann family owned a manor near a waterfall. When the home needed renovations, they remembered Wright’s comment and asked him to come up with a design. The architect visited the region and, upon returning, put his students to work.

[caption id="attachment_675" align="aligncenter" width="549"] Fallingwater de C.Highsmith – Wikipedia[/caption]

When the architect unveiled his design, Edgar Kaufmann was flabbergasted. He was expecting a home to be built below the falls, facing them directly. An innovator at heart, Wright preferred to build the house over the falls. Initially unsure, Kaufman finally approved.

The project’s originality and Wright’s boldness led to numerous conflicts between the architect, the Kaufmann family, the engineers and the construction company, especially when it came to construction of the bridge and foundation. But the Kaufmann house, also called Fallingwater, would go down in history, and became a museum in 1964. It’s considered to be a masterpiece of harmony between man and nature, which Wright called organic architecture. Smithsonian Magazine has placed it among the 28 places to visit before you die.[……]

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