Fallingwater The Model by Paul Bonfilio | Rizzoli Publications | Book Design

Paul Bonfilio (yes, that’s our dad) built an architectural scale model of one of the great masterpieces of modern architecture – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater – and wrote a book about it. The model was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in NYC for their permanent collection and the book was publish by Rizzoli, New York.

Dad is an architect whose side hustle was repairing and building architectural models. He spent 2 days photographing and measuring every inch of the actual house and it took him 2 years to build the model. Everything was researched and replicated down to the very smallest detail. In fact, in the model there is a very slight droop in the 2nd floor terrace that cantilevers over the living room. After much investigation, my dad discovered that the actual house drooped 1” in the same area and his model matched it exactly to scale.

Dad was meticulous and precise in reproducing every piece of furniture, the waterfall, every shrub, tree, the stonework inside and out. He collected a few stones from outside on the property to match the stone color in the model. One of the pieces looked like a perfectly scaled boulder so he placed it in the landscape of the model as a symbol – connecting it to the actual house.

His experience and obsessive documentation of the project culminated in a book which thoroughly describes and illustrates his process in building the model. Dad rightfully insisted that the accent color match the paint color Wright used at Fallingwater – “Cherokee Red.”