Yale art historian Vincent Scully called it a "generous, informal, and continuous seminar on architecture through which every architectural student in America has come into Johnson's debt." Johnson, the founder of the department of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the first person to ever receive the prestigious Pritzker Prize, built the house between 1949 and 1955 as his getaway from the city. Since then, Frank Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned over six decades and he has produced public and private buildings throughout the world. His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field, including the Pritzker Prize. Or, it could have had something to do with the glass house he lived in for much of his life. Is it all a delightful masquerade, a firefly dancing on the surface of life and art for half a century?
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And perhaps its greatest magic trick is how expansive it all feels, thanks to the surrounding landscape on all four sides, which is just as much a part of the home as the interior. The Study was used for work, and the galleries were used to store and display the art collection. Other structures were deemed “follies” due to their unusable size or shape, such as the low-ceilinged Pavilion on the Pond or the Ghost House, made of chain-link fencing and lilies. The Glass House is a renowned architectural landmark designed by Philip Johnson, located in New Canaan, Connecticut.
In Johnson's lifetime (1906–
Freud links this sensation of dread and horror to the idea of the house and its heimlich (homey) interior, which through unexpected changes is transformed into an unheimlich space. In that context, we might see Johnson’s house as a Polish farmhouse “purified” by the fire of war of everything but its architectural “essence,” enclosed in a glass box to preserve it intact on a pastoral site in Connecticut, thus apparently exorcising the horror. Johnson liked to say that he considered himself a historian first, a landscape artist second, and an architect by accident, and everything about the grounds at the Glass House estate is carefully planned. The brilliant patch of wildflowers between the Glass House and the Studio?
Plan Your Visit
On these days (Monday, Friday, and Saturday) you can also add an extra hour (at double the cost) to your visit and tack on a tour of Johnson's painting and sculpture galleries as well. 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. One was even with Romanesque arches all over the place, brick, basically a stone and brick house. I finally, in despair of getting the house on the knoll because the knoll is too small, I had to take half the house and put it back against the hill, which is the way it is now.
Tickets for this program include tours of both sites, shuttle transportation between sites, and light refreshments. The Glass House was the start of Philip Johnson’s fifty-year odyssey of architectural experimentation in forms, materials, and ideas, through the addition of other structures. These include the Brick House/Guest House, Pond Pavilion, Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, Ghost House, Library/Study, Da Monsta, and the methodical sculpting of the surrounding landscape.
Architect's Square Foot Costbook
For this fundraising event, they will discuss both their shared history as well as their vision for how architecture can contribute to a more sustainable environment and how the role of the architect is evolving in response to global issues today. Johnson is widely considered one of the most influential modern American architects, and his legacy is well preserved at his estate in New Canaan, Connecticut. On Johnson’s property is his famous Glass House, which was completed in 1949.
The Paper Log was originally conceived in 1995 as a shelter for Vietnamese refugees displaced by the Great Hands-on Earthquake, exemplifying Ban’s commitment to affordability and sustainability and the use of recycled materials. According to Shigeru Ban, “If a building is loved, it becomes permanent.” Ultimately, the work aims to challenge conventional notions of permanence and material strength. It’s a small house, to be sure — just one room — and it’s made mostly of paper, but it’s more resilient than it looks. At the architect Philip Johnson’s former estate in New Canaan, Conn., there has long been a Glass House and a Brick House.
Johnson famously quipped that he had the most beautiful and expensive wallpaper the world had ever known. An asymmetrical white-brick shed with a glass roof, it was conceived as a series of interlocking rooms that step down around an open, central space. The procession down and around through the space allows you to focus on individual works while catching glimpses of what’s to follow — a wonderful architectural tease. The Glass House is located in New Canaan, Connecticut; the Glass House Visitors Center, where all tours begin, is at 199 Elm Street, right across the street from the MTA's New Canaan Metro-North train station. One- and two-hour timed ticketed tours are conducted every Monday, Friday and Saturday, and three-hour self-guided tours are held on Sundays.
The multiple reflections on the transparent glazed expanses seem to conceal as much as they reveal. The glass walls and other intriguing features of the dwelling inspired psychoanalyst Adele Tutter to go beyond the usual architectural analysis to a psychological one. But as imposing as it is as a historical landmark, it is as telling about his weaknesses as a designer as about his influence as an advocate for architecture.
The basic concept for Johnson's glass house was borrowed from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was designing the glass-and-steel Farnsworth House during the same period. Unlike the Farnsworth House, however, Philip Johnson's home is symmetrical and sits solidly on the ground. The interior space is divided by low walnut cabinets and a brick cylinder that contains the bathroom. While it's a museum now, not a home, almost all the furniture is exactly as it was when Johnson lived there. The house is small, just 1,815 square feet of open-plan design (a common home layout now, but a rarity in the 1940s), containing dining room, kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, and study.
Consistent with earlier statements by the National Trust and the Glass House, and as an acknowledgement of the Johnson Study Group concerns, we assert without equivocation that racism and fascism do not reflect the values of our organization. With equal conviction, we believe that historic sites must serve as powerful spaces for learning, reflection, and truth-telling. The Glass House has and will continue to engage in frank dialogue and open exchange about all aspects of its history, including Philip Johnson’s own history, and to work diligently to expand inclusivity in all aspects of our programming and operations.
Designed by the renowned architect Shigeru Ban, recipient of the Pritzker Prize, the installation process involved guiding 39 architecture students in fabricating and assembling the Paper Log House. This 13.5x13.5-foot enclosure is crafted from paper, tubes, wood, and milk crates and stands as a testament to Ban’s various humanitarian efforts. In fact, the installation specifically echoes the architect’s temporary housing for disaster victims across five continents over three decades.
Explore the Glass House campus at your own pace on days dedicated to self-guided visits to the site. Educators will be available across the site to provide information and answer questions. Visitors on self-guided tour days will have access to The Glass House, Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, Studio, Pavilion in the Pond, Monument to Lincoln Kirstein and both upper and lower landscapes. This option will include the newly restored interior of the Brick House beginning on May 2, 2024. Picnicking, professional photography, tripods, and easels are not permitted.
The campus serves as a catalyst for the preservation and interpretation of modern architecture, landscape, and art; and a canvas for inspiration and experimentation. The Glass House has been "universally viewed as having been derived from" the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe according to Alice T. Friedman, though the Farnsworth House was not completed until 1951, two years after the Glass House. Johnson curated an exhibit of Mies van der Rohe work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947, featuring a model of the glass Farnsworth House.[4] It was an important and influential project for Johnson and for modern architecture.
Out of this exploration, she has constructed a fascinating and often penetrating narrative that allows us to see Johnson’s Glass House as a deeply layered expression of his own psyche. Still, the house is a deliberate transformation, rather than imitation, of Mies’s aesthetic. And no longer is it an optimistic vision of a horizontal universal space but one rooted in the landscape by the cylinder containing a fireplace and bathroom—a “post-modern” house avant la lettre. Right nearby, just past Julian Schnabel's Ozymandias (Johnson saw this enormous piece on display in the plaza outside the Seagram Building in 1989, and immediately bought it from the artist), is the Sculpture Gallery. This features an interior inspired by the villages of the Greek islands, and multiple staircases leading to landings and bays holding works by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, George Segal, Bruce Nauman, and John Chamberlain. 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."
Our most popular tour includes The Glass House, Painting Gallery, Sculpture Gallery, outdoor sculpture, and Da Monsta, with a three-quarter mile walk over grass and paths. The campus serves as a catalyst for the preservation and interpretation of modern architecture, landscape and art. 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.
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