Architect, educator, author, Fulbright Scholar, and Japan Foundation Research Fellow are just a few of the "hats" that School of Architecture & Environment Professor Emeritus Kevin Nute, PhD, has worn throughout his illustrious career. Now Nute will add a new title to his list of accomplishments, Scholar in Residence at Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater house. As one of America's preeminent architects and designers in the 1900s, Wright's buildings are seen as important pieces of Americana and history, with many historical buildings lovingly cared for and managed for future generations, and Fallingwater is one such home. Overhanging a waterfall in the gorgeous southwestern mountains of Pennsylvania, Fallingwater and its 469 acres of surrounding land have been managed by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy since 1963. Since then, Fallingwater has been offered as a resource to the public and researchers alike, giving intimate access to a preserved work with its setting, artwork, and original Wright-designed furnishings intact.
Nute's residency will focus on the timeless aspects of what is considered one of the world's most famous modern house with a project that stems from his most recent book, 2024's Embodied Time: Temporal Cues in Built Spaces. Nute will analyze the various ways in which the historic house is a suspension in time as well as space, primarily through its inclusion of archetypal human experiences and the perpetual presence of natural phenomena. Fully funded by the Fallingwater Institute, Nute's residency will be stretched over multiple visits during his 2025–26 sabbatical from the University of Hawai'i beginning in May 2025, with the intention of viewing the house under starkly contrasting conditions of the four seasons in western Pennsylvania.
This is not Nute's first time engaging with Wright's work, having analyzed the iconic architect's work during his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge, which Nute won an American Institute of Architects (AIA) award in 1994 for its publication as Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan. An expanded and completely revised edition of that book is due to be published by the World Scientific later this year as Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan Revisited: Traditional Japanese Culture as a Source of Modern American Architecture.
Read the University of Hawai'i's Announcement: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2024/07/23/frank-lloyd-wrights-fallingwater/