Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater , Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1935-6

Please read the desciption below before contacting me. All the information regarding the paper is below. The topic is Frank loyd Wright, Fallingwater, Bear Run,Pennsylvania,1935-6. The paper is due tomorrow (5/12/2014) at 9:20pm

 

 

1. General: 

 

1.1. The final assignment should be six to seven pages long. The assignment is due the 

Sunday after the last day of classes. You can turn it in on line, but you must make sure 

that I write you back to say that I received your assignment. 

1.2. I expect that you use more than just on-line sources. Please include a bibliography and 

have at least two books (Google book search doesn’t count) and an article. I can help 

you find the article through the library website. 

1.3. Do not plagiarize. (See note below) 

 

What should this paper include? 

 

2. An introduction that gives a brief description of the building or city and a short history of 

one or two sentences, an indication of its significance, and a foreshadowing of what is to 

come in the paper, including a reference or note on how the building relates to the larger 

themes of the class (discussed below). Length: one to three paragraphs, about a half a page 

to a page and a half. 

 

3. A formal description of a building. This is just a description of how the building appears 

visually—it’s overall shape, color, massing, texture, façade arrangement, and floor plan. In 

sum, what does the building look like? 

 

4. Who paid for the building? This refers to the patron of the building. What did the patron 

want to get out of the construction of this building? Why did they expect to get some sort of 

result out of the construction of the building? Where did they get their money from in the 

first place? (I understand that this information will not always be available for every 

student—but you should work toward, even guess at possible answers to these questions). 

 

5. What would it be like to be inside the building? Here I would like you to take an 

imaginary walk through the building. What would it be like to be inside the building? What 

is the interior like? So here you need to make up a particular individual (the owner, a 

peasant, a child, and just imagine what it would be like to move through the space. Much of 

this is going to be conjecture. This should be at least a page. 

 

6. Please feel free to concentrate on a particular facet or theme for a few pages. Thus, 

rather than giving a generalized history of the Bauhaus building, you might want to focus on 

the furniture in the building, how it was used as a iconic symbol of the school, or how 

students felt working inside the building. Or, if you working on Frank Lloyd Wright’s 

Falling Water, you might want to look at the structural system, why the building was located 

in Bear Run, or the materials used in the building. 

 7. Describe how your building is part of a larger building type. Remember that your 

building is a part of a building type—it might be a library, park, city hall, art museum, 

factory, or a recreation stadium. Please mention how it is like and not like other buildings of 

your type. About a half a page to a page. This might be related to the larger theme section 

below. 

 

8. Did your building help define a particular style? (like the International Style) Did it help 

further or expand or break away from a particular style? 

 

9. How your building relates to a larger theme of the class: this class tries to compare 

buildings on occasion that are from different and times and different cultures. Think about 

how your building is like and not like other buildings that also fall under this theme. What I 

would like to do is just have you decide on a larger theme that has been addressed in class 

and then compare your building/city to at least two other buildings and note how they are 

similar or different. 

Some but not all of these themes are: 

• Expressions of propaganda, power, or revolutionary ideas 

• Importance use of nature, its restorative qualities, helps repair people from urban living 

• Innovative use of technology/structure 

• Expression of cultural or political radicalism 

• A particular style or artistic decoration 

• Buildings for leisure/entertainment 

• Urban improvement 

• Public space 

• Effort to help the working class or poor 

• Infrastructure 

• The use or respect for nature 

• Innovative methods of interiors 

• Modern architecture outside of Europe and the United States 

• Colonialism 

• Visionary architecture 

• Impact of industrialization/mass production 

• Efforts to radically reinvent the city 

• Rise of new building types 

• Large-scale urban planning efforts 

• Rise of Enlightenment thinking/scientific method 

• Interest in using forms from the ancient Greeks or Romans 

• Efforts at public housing 

• Architecture for youth culture 

• Capitalism’s influence on architecture 

• Counter culture 

• Suburbanization 

• Impact of war, military efforts 

• Innovative structural methods 

• Buildings types designed for leisure activities • Landscapes that are divided by status, gender, class, or power

• Patronage (one might want to consider what the patron wanted to say by funding the 

construction of a certain building) 

• Aesthetic theory 

• Critical interventions within a particular society 

 

10. Conclusion: restatement of major themes (approx. half a page) 

 

11. I would like to see a few images in your project, floor plans are especially welcome. 

 

12. A note on plagiarism 

• The CCA Academic Integrity Code states that the students should not plagiarize and it is 

a violation of the code. CCA provides this definition” “Plagiarism, or the intentional or 

knowing representation of words, images, concepts, or ideas of another as one’s own in 

any academic or studio exercise.” The code goes on to state that fabrication of any 

information is a violation of the code, and provides this definition: “Fabrication, or the 

intentional and unauthorized fabrication or invention of any information or citation in any 

academic or studio exercise.” 

• Also, I will catch you if you plagiarize. I have been reading student papers for a long 

time and I know what plagiarism looks like, what is your writing and what is found in 

books or articles. As I read papers, I often Google phrases found student assignments. 

 

 

 

 

 

A few notes on sources 

 

1. Lauren MacDonald, the librarian at the SF CCA library knows you are working on term 

papers and will help you find sources. 

2. On-line sources: 

2.1. Everyone begins with on-line sources and you should do the same. Wikipedia, blogs, 

and other Internet sites will be helpful. Please remember that many of these sites cannot 

be trusted, as they are not reviewed by scholars. Also note how many of them repeat or 

just steal from other on-line sources. 

3. General histories in the CCA library: 

3.1. A good place to begin would be to look up your building/city in general surveys on 

architectural history. For example, you might want to look at such sources as our own 

textbook (on reserve at the library), or surveys by Spiro Kostof, Marvin Trachtenberg, or 

David Watkins (they all in the shelves around NA200). 

3.2. Also you might want to look at an architectural history text that focuses on a specific 

time period, style, or place that would include your topic. That means you might want to 

look at the history of Indian architecture, medieval architecture, English architecture, 

Italian architecture, a source on the Gothic, or on Constantinople or Rome. You get the 

idea. Often these texts will have a long entry on your topic. 

4. Context sources: 4.1. You are likely thinking about setting your building in a larger cultural, political, 

economic, or social setting, thus keep in mind books that are not about architecture per 

se, but will give you background on the society that produced the building you are 

studying. Thus if you are working on a term paper about the Incas, you don’t just need 

to look at the architectural histories of the Inca empire, but sources on the Incas in 

general. 

4.2. Specific histories: Of course you might be lucky enough to have a single text on your 

4.3. Ask Tyler or Bill. 

 

5. Journals: 

5.1. A major source for your paper will be articles in JSTOR. This is accessed through the 

library home page, then click on journals and articles, and this will lead you to the 

catalogs for JSTOR and Avery on line. There is even a way to pull up sources from a 

variety of databases at one time. 

5.2. JSTOR is a database of articles from a variety of academic journals (not just 

architectural journals). Usually the articles themselves are available on line as a PDF. 

However, older articles (like from the 1960s) might not be here for all journals. 

5.3. Avery is a guide to articles in architectural journals. This might or might not have 

PDFs—and you might need to search for the bound copy of the journal in the SF stacks 

5.4. The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) is a particularly good 

source for architectural history.