Emily Mitchell

February 10th, 2017

Period 7

Compare and contrast: #139 vs. #151

Fallingwater, or the Kaufmann Residence, is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd

Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, 43 miles southeast of Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania. One problem of building was that the location of the north bank of Bear Run was

not large enough to provide a foundation for a typically built Wright house. The Kaufmanns

planned to entertain large groups of people, so the house would need to be larger than the plot

allowed so a cantilevered structure was used to address this. The house was completed in 1937

and donated to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1964. Fallingwater stands as one of

Wright's greatest masterpieces both for its dynamism and for its integration with the striking

natural surroundings, similar to that of the Spiral Jetty located in the Great Salt Lake of Utah.

Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be

the central work of American sculptor Robert Smithson. Built on the northeastern shore of the

Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah it is made entirely of mud, salt crystals, and basalt

rocks. Spiral Jetty forms a 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide counterclockwise coil jutting from the

shore of the lake. Smithson was reportedly attracted to the Rozel Point site due to its stark anti-

pastoral beauty and industrial remnants from the nearby Golden Spike National Historic Site, as

well as an old pier and a few unused oil rigs. Bob Phillips of Ogden, Utah used two dump trucks,

a large tractor, and a front end loader to haul the 6,650 tons of rock and earth into the lake.

Smithson actually had Phillips crew build the jetty twice. The first took six days of work, using
heavy equipment, but two days later, Smithson had Phillips team redo it, to create today's spiral

shape. In 1999, Spiral Jetty was donated to Dia Art Foundation which maintains the lease of

Utah sovereign lands in Great Salt Lake upon which the artwork is sited, and is responsible for

the stewardship of this iconic earthwork.