The Houses of Philip Johnson

About this book

For almost three-quarters of a century as a critic and curator beginning in 1930s and as a practicing architect since the 1940s Philip Johnson has been at the center of modern architectures development. His celebrated Glass House built in 1949 in New Canaan Connecticut a crystallization of Johnsons commitment to the high modernism of his mentor Mies van der Rohe is perhaps the single most famous house of the twentieth century. Until now however that house has not been looked at in the context of Johnsons many other house projects. This book the first to comprehensively survey Johnsons residential work not only brings to light a largely neglected side of Johnsons achievement but freshly illuminates his entire career. By examining all of Johnsons houses authors Stover Jenkins and David Mohney both architects help us understand the Glass House as an expression of Johnsons developing thought. Focusing first on Johnsons student work at Harvard and his early commissions they show how the Glass House reflects Johnsons concentrated study not only of pioneering modern architects including Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier but of masters of previous centuries such as Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Karl Friedrich Schinkel. They detail the three-year design process of the Glass House and then show how Johnson moved beyond the influence of Mies to create a remarkably diverse body of work one that is nevertheless unified by characteristic themes like Johnsons inventive development of the Miesian court-house scheme and his articulation of space by the use of connected pavilions. Johnsons clients have always included powerful patrons of art and architecture. Presented in this book are his jewel-like townhouse for Blanchette Rockefeller and the Houston home of John and Dominique de Menil with its enclosed court; projects for collector Joseph Hirshhorn; and the spectacular vacation house at Cap Bnat for the Biossonnas family. Recent projects include a sprawling desert compound in Israel and a village-like vacation residence in the Caribbean. But from the beginning when Johnson submitted a house he built for himself in Cambridge Massachusetts as his graduate thesis he has been his own most effective client. The book concludes with a look at the ten built and seven unbuilt projects he has designed over the years for the New Canaan estate. As an afterword the book includes a penetrating essay by architectural historian Neil Levine who argues that we must now recognize Johnsons publication of the Glass House in a 1950 article as a turning point in the recognition of modernism as a historical movement. Supporting a critical account of approximately thirty built and forty unbuilt projects the book includes numerous plans and drawings many never before published and historical photographs. New color photographs by Steven Brooke capture the ways Johnson has used light space and landscape to create some of modernisms most appealing houses. Essential reading for architects and students this book is also a vital resource for the study of one of modern architectures most influential figures.