Today we are starting a new series of articles called “The House of the Architect”. We will choose cases of houses designed by some of the masters of the 20th century, in order to explore the figure of the architect as inhabitant.

Some of them will be the houses in which the architects lived; others are simply houses that became personal obsessions, projects that embody their ideas and their deepest intuitions and desires. The first case is the Glass House.

The Glass House was designed by Philip Johnson, and built on the top of a hill in New Canaan, Connecticut. The architect lived there since its construction in 1949 until he passed away in 2005. The house is known as a paradigm of transparency and minimalism.

The “glass box” concept derived from the ideas of Mies van der Rohe, and in fact, it is not difficult to see the similarities with early drawings of the Farnsworth House. In an article published in Architectural Review in 1950, Johnson admitted to being in debt with his master for life. They say that Mies, who was extremely rigorous and perfectionist, stormed out of the Glass House after acknowledging the poor constructive sensitivity of that version of his glass box. He refused to stay for the night and left in anger. Understandable, we may say, as his disciple had also got ahead: the Farnsworth House would not be finished until two years later.

Johnson called the house “my fifty-year diary”. A single rectangular space of 10 x 17 meters contains the bedroom, living room, dining room, bathroom (inside a brick cylinder that visually anchors the house to the ground), and a kitchen with a long bar, ideal for cocktail parties.

In fact, Johnson, first curator of the architecture department of MOMA in the thirties, belonged to the intellectual and artistic elite of New York, and parties in the Glass House were quite frequent over the years.

Just envision Andy Warhol, John Cage and some of Johnson’s students in Yale, like Robert A.M. Stern, discussing something vividly while sipping from their martini glasses. The oaks and maple trees reflect on the glass and compose the background of the scene.

Like every extreme, the Glass House needed a counterpoint, something that allowed the inhabitant to take shelter from the exposure to which he was necessarily subjected: the Brick House. It was built at the same time than the Glass House and had a double function: accommodating the installations and providing privacy whenever Johnson would need it. In that case, he would slip in through a subterranean passage that connected both houses, accessible from the bathroom nucleus of the Glass House. The Brick House is solid and opaque, while it keeps the dimensions of its partner. Both houses are placed almost opposite.

Johnson completed the complex with new volumes along the years. Some had specific functions (the studio and the painting and sculpture galleries, aimed to keep a very decent art collection). Others he just simply called his “follies”, and they were experiments with a shape that made them impossible to be used for a particular activity (Lake Pavilion, Ghost House, Da Monsta). There are a total of fourteen buildings, spread on a surface of 190,000 square meters.

In the last years, the Glass House has become a place of pilgrimage for architects and students. Those who have been there say they felt an atmosphere of reflection and communion with nature, perhaps reminiscent of what Philip Johnson experienced in his last years. However, no one can deny that, for many years, this was a house full of life, interesting discussions, artistic events, laughter and friendship. In the words of Johnson:
 

“I designed the Glass House to make people feel good.”


We leave you with a video of a dance event that Merce Cunningham organized in the house in 1967. It was announced as a “country happening”, and ended with a live performance by The Velvet Underground.

More information

Philip Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He was descended from the Jansen family of New Amsterdam, and included among his ancestors the Huguenot Jacques Cortelyou, who laid out the first town plan of New Amsterdam for Peter Stuyvesant. He attended the Hackley School, in Tarrytown, New York, and then studied at Harvard University as an undergraduate, where he focused on history and philosophy, particularly the work of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. Johnson interrupted his education with several extended trips to Europe. These trips became the pivotal moment of his education; he visited Chartres, the Parthenon, and many other ancient monuments, becoming increasingly fascinated with architecture.

In 1928 Johnson met with architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was at the time designing the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. The meeting was a revelation for Johnson and formed the basis for a lifelong relationship of both collaboration and competition.

Johnson returned from Germany as a proselytizer for the new architecture. Touring Europe more comprehensively with his friends Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Henry-Russell Hitchcock to examine firsthand recent trends in architecture, the three assembled their discoveries as the landmark show "Modern Architecure: International Exhibition" in the Heckscher Building for the Museum of Modern Art, in 1932. The show and their simultaneously published book "International Style: Modern Architecture Since 1922" was profoundly influential and is seen as the introduction of modern architecture to the American public. It celebrated such pivotal architects as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. The exhibition was also notable for a controversy: architect Frank Lloyd Wright withdrew his entries in pique that he was not more prominently featured.

As critic Peter Blake has stated, the importance of this show in shaping American architecture in the century "cannot be overstated."[citation needed] In the book accompanying the show, coauthored with Hitchcock, Johnson argued that the new modern style maintained three formal principles: 1. an emphasis on architectural volume over mass (planes rather than solidity) 2. a rejection of symmetry and 3. rejection of applied decoration.[citation needed] The definition of the movement as a "style" with distinct formal characteristics has been seen by some critics as downplaying the social and political bent that many of the European practitioners shared.

Johnson continued to work as a proponent of modern architecture, using the Museum of Modern Art as a bully pulpit. He arranged for Le Corbusier's first visit to the United States in 1935, then worked to bring Mies and Marcel Breuer to the US as emigres.

From 1932 to 1940, Johnson openly sympathized with Fascism and Nazism. He expressed antisemitic ideas and was involved in several right-wing and fascist political movements. Hoping for a fascist candidate for President, Johnson reached out to Huey Long and Father Coughlin. Following trips to Nazi Germany where he witnessed the attack on Poland and contacts with German intelligence, the Office of Naval Intelligence marked him as suspected of being a spy but he was never charged. Regarding this period in his life, he later said, "I have no excuse (for) such unbelievable stupidity... I don't know how you expiate guilt." In 1956, Johnson attempted to do just that and donated his design for a building of worship to what is now one of the country's oldest Jewish congregations, Congregation Kneses Tifereth Israel in Port Chester, New York. According to one source "all critics agree that his design of the Port Chester Synagogue can be considered as his attempt to ask for forgiveness"  for his admitted "stupidity" in being a Nazi sympathizer. The building, which stands today, is a "crisp juxtaposition of geometric forms".

During the Great Depression, Johnson resigned his post at MoMA to try his hand at journalism and agrarian populist politics. His enthusiasm centered on the critique of the liberal welfare state, whose "failure" seemed to be much in evidence during the 1930s. As a correspondent, Johnson observed the Nuremberg Rallies in Germany and covered the invasion of Poland in 1939. The invasion proved the breaking point in Johnson's interest in journalism or politics and he returned to enlist in the US Army. After a couple of self-admittedly undistinguished years in uniform, Johnson returned to the Harvard Graduate School of Design to finally pursue his ultimate career of architect.

Among his works is The Glass House, where he lived until his death, the headquarters of AT & T, the National Centre for Performing Arts of India, the Crystal Cathedral in California, the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, the Lincoln Center in NY or Puerta de Europa towers in Madrid.
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Published on: December 21, 2012
Cite: "Life in a Glass House" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/life-a-glass-house> ISSN 1139-6415
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