描述

The first collection of writing about one of the most famous American houses to be built in the 20th century. 

Philip Johnson has been one of the seminal figures in the history of twentieth-century modern architecture. His influence in the United States and abroad has been great—his contribution to the New York skyline alone range from his work on Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building to his landmark design for the AT&T headquarters. A major cultural catalyst, he was the founder and longtime director of the Architecture and Design Department at The Museum of Modern Art, where he introduced the International Style to America. He has also built up an important personal collection of contemporary painting and sculpture.

The Glass House includes nineteen essays by such well known critics and art historians as Kenneth Frampton, Robert Hughes, Robert A.M. Stern, Peter Eisenman, Vincent Scully, and Johnson himself. The essays discuss not only the Glass House but also the seven other buildings and follies that have been added since 1949 to make up Johnson’s forty-acre compound in Connecticut. From an overview of these buildings–the lake Pavilion, the Guest House, the underground Painting Gallery, the multi-level Sculpture Gallery, the Study, the chain-link Ghost House, and the Lincoln Kirstein Tower– the reader is exposed to a microcosm of the architect’s work over the last forty years.

A fascinating guidebook to a house that many have studied but few have seen, The Glass House is also an important architectural document.