He had considered settling in Washington, D.C., where he’d done his military service, or perhaps in New Haven, until he saw a site in nearby New Canaan, Connecticut: a 47- acre (19-hectare) parcel below Ponus Ridge, adjacent to its eponymous road. “By 1944-out of Cambridge, out of the military, back in New York, and attempting to launch his practice-Philip began casting around for a country residence, a retreat from the city that could serve as a professional calling card. Here’s how Volner describes the project in our new book. Obviously, there are plenty of landmark buildings within Johnson’s long and illustrious career, yet the best known remains his very own Glass House, the home Johnson built for himself in New Canaan, Connecticut, about an hour north of Manhattan, in 1949. “In Philip’s absence,” the author writes, “it is unclear whether American architecture in the twentieth century could truly have come into its own, with as much diversity and creative vigour as it did.” The architect, curator and design agitator, who was born in 1906 and died in 2005, is the subject of our new book Philip Johnson: A Visual Biography and, as its author, Ian Volner says in the introductory text, was a key figure of the period. If you wanted to understand the story of American architecture in the 20th century, you could simply read about the life of Philip Johnson. Though Mies van der Rohe’s influence is undeniable, this weekend retreat was not without some hidden depths of its own. Philip Johnson, the Glass House, and its dark secrets View from the south-east of the Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1949.
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