Frank Lloyd Wright. Your memory is excellent. An avant-garde architect who understood practical design.
You're right, from a purely safety point of view this Chinese building is a monstrosity. Architects in the Ming dynasty surely had more common sense.
The Japanese are very innovative architects. But then again, they had to be. The country is very mountainous and the natural beauty comes from that. But just about every river that passes through a city in Japan has to be lined with concrete walls because the typhoon rains are deadly with lots of mudslides.
America is much flatter terrain. So as I like to say: America is a nation of lawyers. Japan is a nation of engineers.
Here's a view form the look out that guards the harbor of Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture, in Japan. It's where I lived for three years and met my wife.
Not that all is remembered correctly.
What was thought to be Falling Waters was seen for the first time in the movie “A Summer Place” (1959)
LOL, for years the film was remembered with scenes from a house with a waterfall.
Then, the fact that the scenes used another FLW house, pretending it was on the East Coast rather than West.
http://franklloydwrightsites.com/california/walker/walker_house.html.
It is mind blowing how the editors can splice together different scenes to make a movie. Working in Dallas in offices located at the World Trade Center, several films were made right before our eyes. Watched the filming of “Logan’s Run” with the anticipation of seeing the final result and wonder if it would be recognizable. (BTW, didn’t resemble the ‘real thing’ AT ALL!)