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5

MODERNISM IN THE GARDEN

THE GLASS HOUSE, NEW CANAAN

One of the most famous buildings in the world, the Glass House is a poster child for the Modernist vision of a revolutionary new architecture that would dispense with all the inefficiencies and stylistic folderol of the past. Its designer and owner, Philip Johnson (1906–2005), was a leading evangelist of the new faith. Johnson was the curator, with Henry-Russell Hitchcock, of the Modern Architecture: International Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1932, which introduced European Modernism to the United States. For his own house in New Canaan, Johnson took Modernist design to its logical extreme. He used modern industrial materials—steel and glass—in simple geometric forms, and created a universal space with no partitions save for the bathroom.

The Glass House doesn’t stand alone. It was built with a companion, the Brick (or Guest) House, and Johnson added other structures to his estate over the years. (Confusingly, “Glass House” can mean either the house or the estate as a whole.) He and his partner, David Whitney, would move from one to another, depending on what they were doing or what the weather was like. Together, these other buildings present a timeline of Johnson’s ever-changing enthusiasms: New Formalism in the pond pavilion, architecture as procession in the Sculpture Gallery, Postmodernism in the gate, Deconstructivism in the Visitors’ Center, and so on. Unlike the Glass House, they tend to have solid walls, small windows, and tightly controlled views to the outside.