On Saturday I made an architectural pilgrimage to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. The drive down from Pittsburgh, where my boyfriend and I spent the weekend, rolled though tree-covered hills and small, quaint farming communities. It was so restful and pleasant that I almost forgot where we were headed and why.

The tour of the house is only and hour long, but it’s undeniably worth it. The place is like a mid-century modern fantasy land, with bold horizontal lines in rich black walnut, rough-cut stone, ochre-coloured concrete, and dark red window mullions. There is a deep, comforting warmth to the rooms (this isn’t a cold, hulking, Corbusier-style modernism) and at times an almost Victorian feel. The hallways are tight and dark, and there’s an upstairs/downstairs divide between the servants quarters and the rest of the place that feels really old fashioned (the house was designed in the 1930s, which is easy to forget considering that it feels much more contemporary). There’s also a sense of playfulness and levity—the built-in sofas have a cream-coloured upholstery, and are cheerfully accented with square pillows in ketchup-y red and mustard yellow. Most remarkably, walking from room to room, there is just such a clear and palpable feeling of enthusiasm—it’s clear how much Frank Lloyd Wright enjoyed crafting the house. It almost comes across as spontaneous, like jazz, or as though the design just popped out of his head like a witty turn of phrase.

I hope the clients—the Kauffman family—enjoyed spending time in its cascading planes and fluid walls. I imagine I would have loved lounging in either of the pools, or deciding which of the many terraces to sit out on to read the latest New Yorker.