7.29.07: People in Glass Houses

CS and I visited the late Philip Johnson's Glass House during the week and I got a fairly in-depth tour of the grounds.

Although it is the house — really a pavilion, as it’s not that big — that is always pictured in books on modern architecture, it is really only one part of a spread-out complex of buildings. About 40 meters closer to the road is its “dark” twin, the guest house, which was built in the same proportions but made of brick and with no windows on the wall facing the downhill view and the glass house. Inside this two-room hut it’s dark and womb-like, if one can imagine a modernist womb with thick purple pile carpets. There is a regular old basement-style closet here with a hot water heater, electric meters, mops etc. that feeds into a hidden tunnel leading to the glass house. The support system was outsourced. Which answers that recurring question.

Further away are structures that house Johnson’s art collection, a reading library and, almost completely out of sight, an old shingle house that contains the stuff for tending the grounds, bottled water, and “the help”. In theory — in someone’s theory, anyway — all the structures together made one “house”. The glass house itself has a bed on one side, a lounging/dining area, a shower, toilet, sink and a wet bar with an electric stovetop. If one really tried to live in just this building one would have to be a monk. Otherwise there would be the things that all of us live with piled everywhere — magazines, dish soap, pens and pencils, notepads — you get the idea.

Cool idea, to have the various elements of a house made into separate buildings and pavilions. I think another contemporary architect actually did it too, probably in a warmer clime. Of course, in warmer latitudes that kind of partitioning and separation is not modern — it’s thousands of years old. In the tropics and in Africa houses are often composed of a compound of huts: one for washing, one for eating, one for receiving guests, one for cooking and one for sleeping. This complex, in New Canaan, Connecticut — a town now filled with colonial McMansions — doesn’t quite deconstruct and compartmentalize one’s living situation as much as that, but the separation at least helps answer everyone’s 1st question: Practically, how does one live here? A: with a lot of help and probably not for long stretches of time

So, if this icon isn’t really a “house”, in the practical sense, then what is it?

A: It’s a showcase — an extreme version of ideas current at the time, pushed to their logical endpoint. An answer to the architectural question “What if?” Nothing wrong with that. In LA, just after WWII, when the issue of housing loomed large in the public’s attention, the magazine Art and Architecture sponsored local modern architects to build the Case Study houses. Eames, Saarinen, Ellwood and many others were part of this program. These houses were meant to be examples of each architect’s interpretation of the modernist dream as well as being affordable. In LA, of all places, the idealist Bauhaus directive that these places be relatively cheap as well as being no-nonsense severe — a rejoinder to and a liberation from the frilly tastes of the wealthy and the bourgeois — was more or less kept intact. The LA crowd, some of them, used inexpensive off-the-shelf materials and nodded somewhat to the car and the (sometimes) dry desert environment. The idea was that in the post-war era, there was an opportunity created by the housing shortage — and one could either look to Levittown as the solution, or to something more light, airy and revolutionary.

All the architects had trouble getting commissions, so no one could actually see their work at the time. So that program, and the later houses in New Canaan, built by Johnson and 4 of his contemporaries, became, in effect, their sales packages — a little more extreme (certainly in Johnson’s case) than what a client would probably go for, but, because the building was all self-controlled and financed it could be aesthetically rigorous and uncompromising in its design and construction. For a while, in the 80s, I lived in a version of one of those LA houses (though not a Case study house) that architect Gregory Ain built for himself in 1939. It had its faults, but it really was something special — the whole bedroom wall slid on rails to be open to the outside.

When the idea of modernism was brought to NY from Europe, much of its idealist utopian socialist baggage was left behind; it became, in America, mainly through the efforts of Johnson and his circle, a style rather than the structural and architectural equivalent of a political movement.

Not only was the famous glass “house” a showcase, but the surroundings were subtly modified to make a visit into a cohesive experience. If this is more a sales tool than a messy lived-in joint then that somewhat obsessive attention to the surrounding context would seem natural. The attention to detail all around was a little shocking to me, but if you see the whole place as display then it’s totally logical. In a sense Johnson and his partner David Whitney made the whole place — the woods, pond, lawns and houses — into one sprawling gestamkunstwerk.

To the reported shock of their rustic neighbors, the two went on a tree-chopping spree. Views into the surrounding forest were created by removal of any inconvenient and offending trees, meadows and vistas were “improved” by clear-cutting, and limbs and branches that blocked the view were trimmed. It all appears to the eye as quite natural — as if they’d cleverly chosen a naturally landscaped plot on which to build — but, as my guide said, it’s about as natural as Central Park. The trees around the glass house create a canopy, their tall bare trunks like a series of regal columns that one looks through to the pond, the forest, and the marshy depression below. All very controlled and thought-out. The architecture doesn’t stop at the glass walls. One could conceivably view Central Park as a massive work or arboreal architecture.

The surrounding forest itself is meticulously groomed, kept clear of undergrowth and low-hanging branches. Trees were removed here and there to allow patches of light to fall in the middle distance, “improving” the visuals. There are no accidents — you see because they want you to see.

The lawn is mowed according to Whitney’s instructions:

And the purple carpet is vacuumed in a far from careless fashion:

Lovely, no? The repetitive minimalist patterns — the grass, the carpets, the little ripples on the (round) pool, the dappled light — it all seems like one very considered vast modernist artwork, or stage set, as if to say that modernism doesn’t stop at the door of the museum or at a building’s edge. It’s a way of remaking the world.

I don’t know the social details, but I got the sense that Johnson brought people of influence and interest up here. It became, in effect, a modernist cocktail lounge where, with a little lubrication, the doctrine of the modern could be spread.

Johnson abandoned modernism after a while and was criticized for adopting a slew of current architectural trends, but one can only justify those criticisms if one wishes to view him as a great architect associated with a characteristic look, which I don’t. I see him as an early adopter, a proselytizer and an advocate of styles — some of which he himself adopted, others were more associated with other architects or artists. He promoted modernism and other styles relentlessly and powerfully. He seems to have been such a tireless advocate that he even became associated with styles and movements he participated in sometimes only briefly.

Such a powerful and socially-connected advocate had a huge and lasting influence — not all of it good. Early on, as a young man, he was enamored with the rigorous no-nonsense philosophy of Nietzsche, which carried over to an admiration for Hitler and the idea of the will to power. There are some embarrassing photos floating around. “Safe danger” was a catchphrase he used in reference to the feeling one should get in a space or surrounds — maybe sometimes his life was not so safe. Although Johnson, along with Alfred Barr and JR Hickock, helped to kick-start MoMA and the idea that modernism was the unstoppable wave of the future, this dalliance with the dark side didn’t go down that well, and reportedly Johnson had to slowly win back the favor of his NY pals. Cocktails may have helped.

Beyond the round pool-object a path leads across a field to the art collection. Johnson has donated truckloads of art to MoMA (and elsewhere?) but there is still a substantial collection here. In an underground bunker one enters a sort of machine for viewing paintings (and large photos):

The paintings, some of which were being restored that day, hang on carpeted panels that rotate around cylindrical columns. With this method one can store a substantial art collection within a limited space. It can’t be viewed all at once; you have to turn the pages of these colossal “art magazines” to do that — well, in order to see more that the 6 paintings that can be seen from the center, the median point amongst the 3 “magazines”.

One imagines Johnson bringing guests over here after a cocktail or two and first surprising them with the fact that there is a bunker hidden under a small hillock, then impressing them with the extent of his holdings and his prescient taste as he flipped through the pages. There are quite a few Schnabels and Salles, a whole Stella retrospective, a few Rauschenbergs, a Warhol portrait and couple of Cindys.

I commented to CS later that it was a little strange that he obviously loved the artwork, but deliberately didn’t choose to live with it. The bunker was his Wunderkammer or box of bijoux, to be opened and shown to guests on special occasions rather that a living environment to inspire and enjoy.

It’s also a very Japanese idea that you don’t overindulge in looking at beautiful things — scrolls are tucked away and only brought out for viewing, and they traditionally build so that a view or vista is only glimpsed fleetingly, briefly.

Further on from the bunker was a concrete structure for Johnson’s sculpture collection. A whitewashed building like a 3-dimensional MC Escher or a miniature Greek village, with stairs leading up and down and around, and with most large pieces on their own unique levels.  Pretty innovative design; it’s surprising more museums haven’t adopted this approach.

There are other structures: one made of chain link fence, an homage to his pal Frank Gehry; one that references Mario Botta or Michael Heizer, or both (I’m guessing), and a pond pavilion that seems to echo Lincoln Center (!) — in miniature.

As an influential advocate of the work of other architects, designers and artists Johnson was incredibly and unusually generous, though he no doubt had a huge ego. Many of his peers are not so kind to one another, so his and Whitney’s social sponsorship must have been refreshing, whether you like the various architectural styles he himself adopted or not. He might be viewed as a kind of impresario, someone who presents for our delectation something new and exciting. Traditionally, this referred just to the entertainment business, but as Jacques Cousteau referred to himself as “an impresario of scientists” one could take a generous view of Johnson in this way — not as someone who merely changed styles according to the current flavor but as someone who, from his glass soapbox, could learn from and advocate for what others were doing.