Fallingwater: The Model [Hardcover]

Paul Bonfilio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2001

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, in Bear Run, Pa., of 1935, is one of the great masterpieces of modern architecture. Its model, constructed by Paul Bonfilio in 1984 , is a masterpiece of model making and a high point in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In discussing how the model was built, the design of the famous house itself is also analyzed, throwing new light on many intricacies of its complex construction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At first blush, the title has the same desperate ring as McDonald's: The Tofuburger or Disney: The Diaper--they couldn't think of another angle for a book about Fallingwater, the 1937 Pennsylvania house that still ranks as perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous and loved project, so they decided to do a book about the model of Fallingwater? Jeez! Such were my thoughts until I started leafing through this absolutely fascinating little book by Paul Bonfilio, the Madame Tussaud of architectural model-makers, who has created miniature reproductions of architectural landmarks (among them Johnson's Glass House, Neutra's Lovell House, and Mies's Barcelona Pavilion) for the permanent collection of NYC's Museum of Modern Art. Here, Bonfilio walks you through the process of re-creating on a Lilliputian scale this most complicated and beguiling of modernist houses--a job he completed for the MoMA in the early 1980s, only to do it again a few years later for a private commission. His painstaking narration, black-and-white photographs of each stage of the model's creation, and Ted Spagna's excellent photographs of the real house (shot expressly for Bonfilio to use in planning out his work) all work together splendidly here. Anyone who ever found satisfaction in the minutely focused process of assembling a model car or airplane will be completely absorbed by Bonfilio's quest to reproduce with unstinting detail and realism the diverse textures of Wright's masterpiece, from the complex stonework of its inner and outer walls to the dazzling sheen of the waterfall over which the front of the structure so famously perches.

But even better than that, Bonfilio's loving chronicle of taking Fallingwater apart and putting it back together again, as it were, accomplishes something that dozens of other books on this iconic house fail to do: it gets us to look at the house and its complex topography, its every elevation and surface, corner, and detail--as well as the choices, inspired and imprudent, that Wright made in designing it--with a fresh new eye. It's almost like having an investment in its original creation, figuring out step by step how to build a house around a boulder, cantilever it over a waterfall, build half the furniture right into it, and somehow make the whole thing work structurally and look drop-dead gorgeous at the same time. Oh, and the book's end papers are matched to the same Cherokee-red paint that Wright used in the house--the perfect swaddling for this unexpectedly delightful little volume's embarrassment of riches. --Timothy Murphy

About the Author

Paul Bonfilio is an architect, and currently a commissioner and vice-chairman of the Board of Standards and Appeals of the City of New York.

Terrence Riley is chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (February 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847823415
• ISBN-13: 978-0847823413
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 8.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,822,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ... a magical visit with a different perspective ..., June 15, 2004

By 

Glenn Ralston (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Fallingwater: The Model (Hardcover)

In the late '50s I had the unusual chance to personally ask FLW what school might be best to learn City Planning. Not knowing then that his inimitable, signature response would be "you can't learn that in a School, you have to learn by doing."

Later, I also had the pleasure of knowing Paul Bonfilio, and can attest that his own product here is a labor of love that reflects an intuitive, heartfelt resonance.

BTW, if you have the opportunity to personally visit Fallingwater, try to exactly time it to that week in May when the surrounding wooded Moutain Laurel canopy is in their full and profuse bloom for an added breathtakingly magical experience.