- Title
- Measuring Fallingwater: a computational fractal analysis of Wright’s Kaufman House in the context of his theories and domestic architecture
- Creator
- Vaughan, Josephine
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Sited above a waterfall on Bear Run stream, in a wooded gulley in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, the Kaufman house, or Fallingwater as it is commonly known, is one of the most famous buildings in the world. This house, which Frank Lloyd Wright commenced designing in 1934, has been the subject of enduring scholarly analysis and speculation for many reasons, two of which are the subject of this dissertation. The first is associated with the positioning of the design in Wright’s larger body of work. Across 70 years of his architectural practice, most of Wright’s domestic work can be categorised into three distinct stylistic periods—the Prairie, Textile-block and Usonian. Compared to the houses that belong to those three periods, Fallingwater appears to defy such a simple classification and is typically regarded as representing a break from Wright’s usual approach to creating domestic architecture. A second, and more famous argument about Fallingwater, is that it is the finest example of one of Wright’s key design propositions, Organic architecture. In particular, Wright’s Fallingwater allegedly exhibits clear parallels between its form and that of the surrounding natural landscape. Both theories about Fallingwater—that it is different from his other designs and that it is visually similar to its setting—seem to be widely accepted by scholars, although there is relatively little quantitative evidence in support of either argument. These theories are reframed in the present dissertation as two hypotheses. Using fractal dimension analysis, a computational method that mathematically measures the characteristic visual complexity of an object, this dissertation tests two hypotheses about the visual properties of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. These hypotheses are only used to define the testable goals of the dissertation, as due to the many variables in the way architectural historians and theorists develop arguments, the hypotheses cannot be framed in a pure scientific sense. To test Hypothesis 1, the computational method is applied to fifteen houses from three of Wright’s well-documented domestic design periods, and the results are compared with measures that are derived from Fallingwater. Through this process a mathematical determination can be made about the relationship between the formal expressions of Fallingwater and that of Wright’s other domestic architecture. To test Hypothesis 2, twenty analogues of the natural landscape surrounding Fallingwater are measured using the same computational method, and the results compared to the broader formal properties of the house. Such a computational and mathematical analysis has never before been undertaken of Fallingwater or its surrounding landscape. The dissertation concludes by providing an assessment of the two hypotheses, and through this process demonstrates the usefulness of fractal analysis in the interpretation of architecture, and the natural environment. The numerical results for Hypothesis 1 do not have a high enough percentage difference to suggest that Fallingwater is atypical of his houses, confirming that Hypothesis 1 is false. Thus the outcome does not support the general scholarly consensus that Fallingwater is different to Wright’s other domestic works. The results for Hypothesis 2 found a mixed level of similarity in characteristic complexity between Fallingwater and its natural setting. However, the background to this hypothesis suggests that the results should be convincingly positive and while some of the results are supportive, this was not the dominant outcome and thus Hypothesis 2 could potentially be considered disproved. This second outcome does not confirm the general view that Fallingwater is visually similar to its surrounding landscape.
- Subject
- Fallingwater; Frank Lloyd Wright; fractal analysis; box-counting; nature and architecture
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1353331
- Identifier
- uon:31083
- Rights
- Copyright 2017 Josephine Vaughan
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 8 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 203 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |