I saw the picture of it, for the first time, when I was about 7 years old —yeah, only 7; my brother Martín was already in college, majoring in Architecture. I reckon Frank Lloyd Wright entered my list of important people around that time. When I moved to Chicago, about 20 years later, I was very happy to re-encounter Wright’s work, though this time it was “for real,” I mean, not in pictures. I was kind of disappointed that Fallingwater was so far away from Chicago, but, oh well, we had Oak Park itself, and more.

We drove to Pennsylvania last weekend —Louis and Sha got married in Pittsburgh. Olesya suggested to take a detour on the way back, and visit Fallingwater. I wasn’t very enthusiastic at first, because I was doing all the driving. But we did, and I am so happy that we did.

Do you think the pictures and videos you’ve seen of it are great? Well, let me tell you: That’s nothing, being there is a completely different experience. It’s the woods all around you. It’s the view and the sound of Bear Run (the creek), and all the other sounds there. It’s this feeling that the house was already there, that it belongs to that spot in the woods —yet, at the same time, the house is clearly, proudly, made by humans. It’s all the different perspectives of the house and the background, and the house being part of the background, and the background being part of the house. It’s the walls that mimic Bear Run’s stone wall. It’s the timelessness of the design’s good taste. It’s the trees that go up, slim and tall, “through” the house, reinforcing the feeling that the house belongs there, and nowhere else. It’s even the lady taking pictures of it, and moaning like Meg Ryan in that scene of “When Harry met Sally.”

It’s the feeling, the certainty rather, that Frank Lloyd Wright was a genius, and Fallingwater his masterpiece.