Falling Water, Crashing Buses
Thirteen years ago, I visited Fallingwater for the first time. At the time, the iconic house was in the midst of a major reconstruction that cost $11.5 million and involved a complete re-engineering of the cantilevered first and second floors. Wright's original design was compression-based; reinforced concrete terraces extended like diving boards from an anchored core, supported by the bending resistance of those terraces.
The way Fallingwater works now is different, and better: tensioned steel cables connect anchor blocks at the end of those terraces to the core. It's so obviously superior, and the science behind it was already well understood at the time. After all, the Golden Gate Bridge was begun in 1933 and it was far from the first suspension bridge in the country. Why didn't Wright build Fallingwater in tension, not compression? The answer is simple: he just didn't think it through.
While Edgar Kaufmann, Sr.'s vacation home remains the most architecturally significant private residence in American history , I'd suggest that Frank Lloyd Wright's genius was less in Fallingwater's design than in his ability to sell that design to a client. Not only did Kaufmann agree to the ridiculous notion of building a home on his favorite waterfall and sign off on construction costs in excess of five times the original target, he secretly doubled the steel reinforcement in the cantilevers and worked hand-in-hand with Wright to make sure all but the most outrageous of the architect's demands were met. (Yes, FLW wanted the concrete terraces to be plated in gold leaf --- in the middle of the Depression!) As rare a talent as Wright was, Kaufmann was arguably an even more exceptional customer. It helped, of course, that his son was a Taliesin fanatic and aspiring architect himself, but the credit for Fallingwater has be at least partially given to the man who signed the check.
When he signed that check, Kaufmann bought at least three things. He bought the cover of TIME, no small feat for a Midwestern businessman:
He bought the most recognizable and admired home this side of Buckingham Palace, at an inflation-adjusted price that wouldn't get you a top-floor suite at the EPIC Hotel in Miami nowadays. But he also bought a severely under-engineered and fundamentally flawed liability that required constant surveying and attention, from the moment the home was finished and the longest cantilever promptly dropped nearly two inches to the present day's bare-concrete restoration of the guest bedroom. He didn't sue FLW or even ask for part of his $8,000 (that's nearly two hundred grand in today's money) architect's fee back. He recognized Fallingwater for what it was --- a work of art that was thoroughly imperfect and problematic.
I wonder how many of today's one-percenters would be willing to do the same? As previously noted on this blog, I spent some time last week admiring Mark Cuban's massive Feadship yacht at its Miami dock. I wonder whether Mr. Cuban would have been willing to buy that boat knowing from the beginning that it leaked and would eventually require re-engineering at a cost of several times the original purchase price. Today's wealthy customers have more money than ever but they also require a sort of bland perfection in everything they buy. Dwight D. Eisenhower had his Rolex "President" serviced, by mail, several times because the original Oyster Perpetual motion wasn't able to handle the force of Ike's golf swing. Would a sitting President put up with that nowadays?
Today we live in the era of the JD Power rating, the Amazon stars and comments next to every product, and the Equifax background check that includes a lifetime's worth of medical history. Even prostitutes need favorable reviews from the Internet in order to make real money. For a while, it was possible for women to get a pre-game preview on their Tinder hookups. Who doesn't check Urbanspoon or Yelp before making a dinner reservation? (The answer is: me, because I only eat at Wendy's and Ruth's Chris.) It's not excellence that's being sought out in this cultural obsession with track record and customer satisfaction; it's safety.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Yelp! reviews would have been pretty poor. He couldn't stay on budget or deliver on time. He hated tall people and punished them through his architecture. He made the doorways narrow so the furniture he imposed on his homes couldn't be easily removed. He was, in short, a terrible human being. There were hundreds of very good architects available to the Kaufmanns in the nineteen-thirties, architects whose work probably came in on time, under budget, and with absolutely unobjectionable construction.
Can you name any of their designs?
Wright wouldn't be able to get work nowadays. He'd have been drummed out of the business the tenth, or the fifth, or even the first time he did something typically Frank-Lloyd-Wright-ish. He'd have wound up a professor at a community college or a fast-food manager or a Wal-Mart greeter. His fate would be the modern fate of anybody who can't produce good references and solid Yelp! ratings and, possibly, a meaningless certification from a mildly fraudulent quick-bake professional organization. This is no longer a world where genius trumps reliability. We even expect our sports heroes to behave nowadays.
Prior to visiting Fallingwater, I heard a story about a bus driver in the school district where I live. (Yes, I know, it's an odd segue; bear with me.) This driver saw a tractor-trailer stalled at the side of the road, misjudged the available space, and brushed that tractor-trailer, making a rather terrifying noise and bursting one of the bus's rear tires. After making sure that none of the children on the bus were hurt, he continued on to the school on five out of six tires.
"Well," I said in response, "I guess that was his last day on the job."
"No," I was told, "he was driving the bus the next day. I guess they gave him a second chance." I thought about this for a few minutes. My first thought: I hope that guy quits before my son has to ride that bus. My second thought: I hope that bus driver winds up doing something brilliant, like keeping the speed of his schoolbus above 50mph until Keanu Reeves has the chance to defuse a bomb or something. I hope he gets a Richard Jewell's worth of vindication. I hope that my school district's decision to keep this guy on the job despite one mistake turns out to be the right decision.
Not that we'll get another Fallingwater out of it, but think of it as Edgar Kaufmann putting extra steel into the cantilevers. If you're willing to give someone a chance to do something great, you never know --- they might do it.