Emmy-Award Winning Filmmaker Focuses on Fallingwater

Fallingwater in Winter - Photo by Robert Ruschak

Get a look behind the scenes (and under the cantilevered floors) to meet the people who met the challenge of saving Fallingwater. Emmy award-winning filmmaker and Pittsburgh native Kenneth Love uses video, still photography, drawings, computer modeling, audio recordings and interviews, to take us on a tour of discovery to understand Fallingwater's recent restoration.

Love's a uniquely qualified guide, as his association with Fallingwater began with a call in 1982 to be the soundman for an interview with Edgar Kaufmann, jr., the son of the original client. That interview led to "House on the Waterfall", which aired on public television stations nation-wide, and to two insightful films on Fallingwater that Love wrote, produced, and directed Fallingwater: A Conversation with Edgar Kaufmann, jr. (winner of the American CINE Golden Eagle) and Fallingwater: The Apprentices.

"It is of tremendous value to the history of Fallingwater that the same filmmaker has remained so close to its changes and transitions and now its preservation efforts. It allows for continuity in the story that would not otherwise be possible," says Fallingwater's Director, Lynda Waggoner.

Like Wright's innovative use of reinforced concrete in a residential construction of the 1930's, the film shows that the repair methods were equally atypical. High strength steel post-tensioning, more commonly found in modern bridge construction and a few larger scaled buildings, provide the necessary strengthening.

As a primary consultant, structural engineer Robert Silman says, the film's "unfolding story is both compelling and important to the preservation, architectural and engineering community. It's a visual record of an amazing engineering accomplishment" that saved the building that a poll of members of the American Institute of Architects ranked the "best all-time work of American architecture" from falling down.

Debuting at the National Preservation Conference in Pittsburgh in November, the film is now available through the Fallingwater Museum Store. The documentary was made possible by a generous contribution of the Charles A. and Anna Cloyde Brooks Foundation through PNC Advisors Charitable Trust Committee and a Museum Project Grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.  

To order this, and other great holiday gift ideas, visit www.wpcshop.com.