A couple week’s back we visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, a really lovely building that perfectly illustrates why you probably shouldn’t build a poured-concrete modernist gem over an active river in a region of the country that has multiple freeze-thaw cycles each year. Here is the current state of the house (we were there on the absolute final day before they close for six months of renovations/restorations):
So, on the one hand, a bummer to go to an architectural gem and not be able to see it. On the other, I really loved seeing Fallingwater in situ in person (context: my father was trained as an architect, my mother as a painter and lithographer; I grew up with a lot of art and in a lot of museums and a lot of opinions about architecture and design and construction ad nauseam). I especially loved the tension between this balanced, monumental, (in)famous building and this towering unnamed pine tree.
I spent the next week drawing it, compositing my photo and several existing professional shots of the building, so I could have untented Fallingwater in its place among the trees, scaled as I saw it at the end of December 2025. The results were five sketches: Fallingwater (i–v). My wife and kids were divided and which attempt came out best.
My son insisted it was Fallingwater (iii) (he couldn’t say why, but I think it’s because he was standing with me when I took the above pic, and liked how this sketch captures both cataracts and the pool between):
I preferred (iv), because it felt like I got the depth on the rocky outcropping right, and there was some stuff with line weight that worked out:
And my wife and daughter chose (v), with my daughter specifically liking that you could glimpse the windows and underpinning structure better:
In retrospect, I agree with my wife and daughter: Fallingwater (v) is best, but mostly because it makes the tree and the building equal protagonists in the scene. Also, the rocky outcropping is pretty good.
