Ivan Bilibin's fairy tale of Vasilissa the BeautifulBlending a building into nature is rude.
While we all celebrating the genius of this hut design, being a claque of the cheers in front of books and monitors displaying the showy toy of the Kaufmanns', worshipping the great blend of the house and the nature, tell you...you are just in the middle of a fake romance.
This structure has been the teaching model in the world of architecture. Its fame, like the scattering of the fern spores, psychologically prepossessing architecture hero-worshipers in a split of time, aided by boastful American mass and its creator. The cantilevered horizontal planes of the house combine with the vertically flowing water of the stream, with the tone of the stucco blending with the mood of the maples clouding it, with the new tag of 'Organic Architecture', it is hard for you to deny the romantic, heroic and the 'morality' of it. The notion that building must relate to the natural site proved to be a morally indebatable cliche. People, architects, professors starts to be overwhelmed by the highness and the gratitude of being 'responsible' to the site. They talk about morality, humidity, responsibility and all the big words common in a fairy tale. Architecture lecturers said:'' Blend it like Frank!"
Frank Lloyd Wright could never be squeeze into the top 3 modern architect in the world. The reason is that his buildings (which is nature-fancy) are mere romance and have yet reaching the three essentials of being an architecture. Fallingwater, Guggenheim Museum and the Ennie House are in the brink of their collapse.
Complementing the nature is indeed an act contradicting the nature. A human habitat could never be a integral part of nature. Building, is at its own the worst thing a man can do to nature. Because man unlike other animal, we have the authentic characteristic of going against the law of nature. Just like what Charles Jencks once said, human unlike other part of nature, they contradict nature. We invent E=mc2, we explode it, we burn fuels, we kill whales, we light up the forest, we fly with steel machines...The alienating human and his shelter, have they ever pleased nature?... No.
Fallingwater has seem going in touch with every force of nature (visually), except one - GRAVITY (reality). Apart from its leaking roof due to the forced flat horizontal roof (the so-called principal of organic architecture), the two cantilevered terrace which have always been the celebrated feature of this so-called masterpiece, are actually fragile. Engineers have since fighting endlessly to investigate the cause of its 9 inches deflection. The movement under the waterfall rocks, the high humidity of the site, and the irrational cantilever in the microscope of engineering have awaken the dreaming hero-worshiper about what blending with nature really is. We are soon to see the cantilevered house supported by post-tensioning cables - engineers said. The idea of mimicking the naturally cantilevered pine tree, is a romantic undertaking. There, the waterfall is yelling, the air is uttering, deep underneath the house, the foundation is cracking! The building has since interrupt the sheer beauty of an authentic waterfall. It is a FORCED LANDSCAPE! Remember, we are the human!
The beauty of human rationale, the beauty of machine, the glory of the industrial age, sung by the true Modern architecture do not found themselves anywhere in Wright's buildings. They are not modern, moreover, they inherited the ugly mannerism and hypocrisy of the Baroque and Neo-classicm ages. The important first of the principal of firmitas, utilitas and venustas is missing. A building that blend with nature has the ending of falling into the Bear Run Creek! A building blending with nature, complementing nature is a commercial, is a fairy tale, not an architecture! They are FORCED LANDSCAPE and we are the HUMAN!
Vasilissa the Beautiful.?
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