[Retric]

Context is a big part of it. He died in 1959 at 91, so everything he worked on is old at this point much of it well over 100. People have copied and improved on many of his ideas, but it’s a mistake to judge historic buildings based on modern practices.

Natural light is wonderful in a world with AC and modern windows, but the first residential AC was installed in 1931. Structures that could keep you cool where still a big deal when most of his buildings where constructed. Which fed into the idea of building a building for the location, prevailing wind and weather patterns mattered more.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Fallingwater had problems with water leaks from the start. He was essentially the Frank Gehry of his age.

[OldGuyInTheClub]

I believe other engineers were concerned about the Fallingwater cantilevers at the time of construction and in the end they were correct.

[wlesieutre]

Indeed, they recommended much more steel reinforcing than Wright’s design, and what got built was somewhere between the two.

AIA has a pretty detailed history of it here: https://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/1016/1016d_falli...

[lesuorac]

I dunno, it sounds like Wright had the concrete done in 1935 and it was 60 years later that "forensic evaluations revealed fatal developing conditions in the late 1990s.". Like after 60 years you can only detect a problem when you bring out tooling (but not an actual failure!)?

I might be no architect but I always hear the comment that "anybody can design a building that stands but it takes an engineer to design a building that just barely stands". It really sounds like Wright correctly designed a building that just barely stands and the rest of the people are too worried about his success.

[OldGuyInTheClub]

The engineers of his day and his client both raised concerns. This is the first I've heard that engineers build to barely last. Maybe that's true in software. I hope to hell that it is not true for homes, cars, roads, bridges, aircraft, and spacecraft.

[Retric]

Durability isn’t free. No reason to build for 30,000 years when needs change over time.

Public infrastructure like bridges are designed to predictably decay over time so they can be maintained or replaced if they are still useful. Just look at the NYC subway system there’s tons of old tunnels that just aren’t useful today, they didn’t collapse but they still became obsolete and that’s inside a major city which kept it’s subway system.