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On some nights the field opposite the gallery entrance was used for performances, or "happenings," by such luminaries as the Martha Graham Dance Company. Completed in 1949, the Glass House was the first design Johnson built on the property. The one-story house has a 32'x56' open floor plan enclosed in 18-feet-wide floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass between black steel piers and stock H-beams that anchored the glass in place. It is said that the brilliant mentor to Philip Johnson stormed out in fury because of what he interpreted as a lack of thought in the details of the house. Visit five significant houses designed by Philip Johnson in New Canaan, CT on an exclusive one day study tour in celebration of the 110th anniversary of Philip Johnson’s birth and the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Glass House to the public.
A New Exhibition at the MIT Museum Offers Nostalgia for Bygone Architectural Representation
Add a glass ceiling supported by steel rafters that throw a spectacular array of shadows when the sun is shining, and it's easy to see why, in 1991, Johnson called this "the single best room I ever designed." SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment.
Architect's Square Foot Costbook
(…) It’s just a sort of a landscape in which I focused it on this knoll and this oak tree. The “uncanny,” as Freud emphasizes, however, can also be subtle and less striking—something, as he notes, like the fleeting reflection of oneself in a mirror, a sudden revelation of one’s own unwelcome image. In the case of the house of glass, perhaps its uncanniness derives less from its mimicking of the destroyed village than from its dually reflective and transparent surfaces, whose phantasmagoric effects create a montage of interior and exterior, of objects and sky. Johnson seemed to revel in these unhomelike appearances, through which he was at once present and absent in his own dwelling. She points to Johnson’s installation of a painting as a clue, perhaps, of Johnson’s own anxieties over his 1930s sympathies for Nazism. The painting, attributed to Poussin, the Burial of Phocion (1648), is displayed on an easel in the living area as if to connect the house to the picturesque landscape outside.
Can You Build a House Out of Paper? Shigeru Ban Says Yes.
The Glass House or Johnson house, built in 1949 in New Canaan, Connecticut built atop a dramatic hill on a rolling 47-acre estate was designed by Philip Johnson as his own residence and is considered a masterpiece in the use of glass. It is now operated as a historic house museum by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. An early proponent of modern architecture who later went in various design directions, from postmodernism to later explorations of non-Euclidean geometry, Johnson was not easy to pigeonhole stylistically. What is undeniable is that Johnson would go on to build substantial projects worldwide and also became one of the central powerbrokers of architecture in America for much of the 20th Century.
In 1975, Johnson received the Twenty-five Year Award of the American Institute of Architects for his Glass House. In 1986, Johnson donated the 49-acre property to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which offers guided tours of the house. The 49-acre campus is an example of the successful preservation and interpretation of modern architecture, landscape, and art. The Glass House, built between 1949 and 1995 by famed architect Philip Johnson in New Canaan, Connecticut, is one of the nation’s greatest modern architectural landmarks.
Plan Your Trip
The installation aims to explore the unexpected opportunities offered by disparate building materials, such as glass, brick, and paper. Our most concise tour, focusing on The Glass House and its promontory, with a minimum of walking. Night, (1947) by sculptor Alberto Giacometti, was one of a handful of artworks that Philip Johnson displayed in the Glass House while he lived there. The plaster sculpture was granted a place of honor atop the central glass coffee table that Mies van der Rohe designed for Johnson. In the 1960s, Night began to shed its outer layer and was eventually sent to the artist’s studio for repair. Giacometti died before the work was conserved, and the sculpture was never returned.
Weir Farm National Historic Site
The most basic way to experience Johnson's signature work is the one-hour tour of the Glass House and the promontory it sits on. This involves a minimal amount of walking and costs $25 on Mondays and Fridays, and $30 on Saturdays. You'll see the house itself, plus the whirling swimming pool, and the spectacular view out the back windows of the pavilion in the pond below. But perhaps Johnson's most famous creation was his modestly-sized, 56' x 32' rectangle of a home in New Canaan, Connecticut, called Glass House.
Philip Johnson's Glass House Opens to the Public
The focal point of the Glass House is the living room, with a rug defining the space and seating around a low table anchoring it. The placement of furniture is precise and contrasts with the ever-changing landscape outside. The bedroom, separated from the living room by built-in storage cabinets with walnut veneer, is the most private room in the house and contains a small desk. Philip Johnson sits in a corner of the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1998. The multiple reflections on the transparent glazed expanses seem to conceal as much as they reveal.
Visit Philip Johnson's Iconic Glass House Estate in New Canaan
The house is around 2,000 square feet and, aside from steel around its edges, has floor-to-ceiling glass around its entire exterior. Visitors standing in front of the property can see sunlight blazing through the rear walls of the home, seamlessly connecting the house with nature. Johnson famously quipped that he had the most beautiful and expensive wallpaper the world had ever known.
This was his library as well, with some 1,400 volumes, only one of which isn't about art or architecture, but a work of fiction. The floor is also made of red brick laid out in a herringbone pattern and is raised ten inches off of ground level. The only other divisions in the house besides the bathroom are discreetly done with low cabinets and bookshelves, making the house a single open room. This provides ventilation from all four sides flowing through the house as well as ample lighting.
He was greatly committed to the inevitability of change, not only in architecture but in all things. He infused this mentality within his architecture, restlessly embracing new ideas as developed by those around him. His record of accomplishments is both uneven and prodigious but the highlights alone are quite significant.
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