GLH10302-Thesis Exercise

George Lewis Hughes

English 103: Accelerated Composition – Visual Rhetoric Assignment; Thesis Exercise

Daniel Richards

September 3, 2008

Elements of Visual Rhetoric Embedded in the Architectural Attributes of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater

1. Close observations – The house is carefully nestled into the wooded setting of the creek-bed vicinity, as if deliberated to be original – or completely stationary – to the context of its surroundings. It cleverly incorporates the waterfall component as if to suggest that the house was not designed about the feature of “falling water,” per se, but rather the vice versa deceptively appears to be correct vantage point for analyzing this architectural demonstration properly. The house is obviously a daring feat to the extent that its engineering components are extremely demanding, concerning the voluminous factors to consider regarding a self-evidently unstable and especially uneven terrain.

2. First Statement – The architect of the house, Frank Lloyd Wright, wishes to make a statement of how both nature and invention must coalesce in order to exude the most exotic qualities to the matrix properties of residential living, in so designing this house to fit these particularly fashionable criteria.

3. Ask yourself – How? What coalescence? To what effect? How do I know this?

4. Revised statement – Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural design for his world-famous, secluded, Pennsylvania home, Fallingwater, was purported to advance a statement how residential designs need to become more open to mutual feedback from their surrounding environments, in that they need to be eco-friendly enough so as not to waste unnecessary energy and effort in the disruption and mutilation of nature’s currents, both literally and figuratively.

5. Ask yourself – How can this observation be approached from a more purposeful standpoint? How does it tap into larger social or cultural issues?

6. Working thesis – Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural design for his world-famous, secluded, Pennsylvania home, Fallingwater, was purported to advance a statement how residential designs need to become more open to mutual feedback from their surrounding environments, in that they need to be eco-friendly enough so as not to waste unnecessary energy and effort in the disruption and mutilation of nature’s currents, both literally and figuratively. After all, mankind was originally fathomed as a mere component of all the infinitesimal complexities of nature, which always appears ultimately to dwarf our sense of sovereignty and superiority over all its subtleties toward regulating and executing both Creation’s and entropy’s conventions. Thus, as an argument of visual rhetoric, man’s homes must look as natural as those of all the wild creatures of this earth, since the home is the most plentiful manmade accommodation of all, over urban settings, congregational facilities, and attractions alike.