Extremely Yongyan Jin

1. Fallingwater House, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1939

2. Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier, 1929

The Fallingwater House, Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright wanted to create harmony between man and nature, and his integration of the house with the waterfall was successful in doing so. Wright integrated the design of the house with the waterfall itself, placing it right on top of it to make it a part of The Kaufmanns’ lives. But there is no doubt that the consequence is that every year during the flood season, the water from the stream will pour into the house, causing dampness, destroying the floor and making it uninhabitable.

The Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier. In order to reflect the architectural concept of his 5 points of architecture, Corbusier omitted necessary columns in the garage. This caused the curtain wall of the roof unevenly transmit the load through the floor slab to the columns that do not directly correspond to it. This gradually violated his adherence to ‘Diagonal Grid’ system. The flat roof also caused extensive rain leaks. Mrs. Savoye complained: “It’s raining in the lobby, it’s raining on the ramp, and all the garage walls are flooded. What’s more, it’s raining in my bedroom too.’’

In both cases the architectural exemplars have faults that have led to the deterioration of the building, the constant need for maintenance and an attempt to perpetually sustain the architectural image of both buildings.

For Toyo Ito’s White U-house, the perpetual upkeep of the U-house is the burden to entire family. White U-house is an isolated utopia during their hardest time, the house belongs to themselves forever. They chose demolish White U-house for a new life, it’s time to leave the tube. Potentially we could demolish both Fallingwater House and The Villa Savoye examples and maybe, just maybe we might remember them.