DIRT TALK - Dr. Grant Wach and Dr. Fred Zelt
Organic Architecture and Geology- Fallingwater- Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece
Professor Grant Wach
Dalhousie University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Dr. Fred Zelt
Earth Science Excursions, LLC
Fallingwater is of the terrain- a UNESCO World Heritage Site that showcases a unique organic architectural design by Frank Lloyd Wright. Rising from bedrock, Fallingwater incorporates large boulders into interior living spaces and is oriented with the geometry of a landscape created by the interplay of mountain and climate. The relationship of Fallingwater with the landscape is unique. Fallingwater was conceived as a retreat for the E.J. Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh, who engaged Frank Lloyd Wright as architect. In engaging Wright to design a residence on the Bear Run property, E.J. Kaufmann likely had imagined a structure downstream of the waterfalls, with a view of the falls.
Wright had visited Bear Run twice, and he requested a map of topography in the vicinity of the waterfalls including the location of every boulder and large tree. Sketched in his Wisconsin studio, Wright’s design was, and is, a masterpiece of blending, echoing, and amplifying the natural setting. The house is cantilevered over Bear Run and the upper waterfall. Multiple terraces, windows, and use of natural materials and finishes allow residents of Fallingwater to be part of the natural setting, not distant admirers.
Building stone was quarried near the house from a 2-meter-thick zone of quartzose medium to thin-bedded, fine to very fine-grained sandstones in the Pennsylvanian upper Pottsville Formation. The building stone has abundant trace fossils and ripple marks, interpreted to have been deposited in a shoreface environments with some tidal influence, or possibly in tidal flat environments. The house rests on sandstone bedrock of the Homewood sandstone, a Middle Pennsylvanian unit within the upper Pottsville Formation. At Fallingwater, the Homewood sandstone is interpreted to fill an incised valley with coarse, fluvial sandstones common in the lower part of the valley fill and finer-grained fluvial sandstones with possible evidence of marine or brackish influence in the upper fill. The Fallingwater building stone unit overlies the Homewood sandstone, above an interpreted marine flooding surface. Thickening of the Homewood sandstone in synclines suggests that deposition was influenced by Alleghanian deformation. Natural fractures in competent bedrock controlled the orientation of Bear Run at Fallingwater, and the fit of the house within the three-dimensional landscape of the valley, stream and waterfall. Variation in natural fractures in bedded versus massive sandstone layers appears to have controlled the azimuths of the edges of the waterfalls at Fallingwater.
Biography: Professor Grant Wach began his career advising worldwide for multinational companies in the energy sector and is now Professor of Geoscience at Dalhousie University. His research includes energy sustainability, geothermal energy, and carbon storage; his research goal is to understand the reservoir component of petroleum, CCUS and geothermal systems; part of the path to Carbon Neutrality, and the steps towards the Energy Transition/Diversification the World is now undergoing. Professor Wach is an expert advisor to the Energy Sustainability Committee of the UNECE and the team released their technology brief on CCUS. He has advised the Nova Scotia government on Carbon Storage and Sequestration. Professor Wach co-led the EAGE Workshop on Geothermal in Latin America, with follow-on courses to the EAGE worldwide on Geothermal and CCS. Professor Wach studied at Western University (Hons. B.A. Geog.); University of South Carolina (M.Sc. Geology) and the University of Oxford (D.Phil. Geology). He was the first recipient of the AAPG Foundation Professor of the Year Award, awarded the prestigious Darcy McGee Beacon Fellowship, and was the recipient of the CSPG Stanley Slipper Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to exploration and development, teaching, and mentorship.
Time
Location
Milligan Room - 8007 LSC