Splendid isolation

American architect Philip Johnson’s extraordinary Glass House, completed in 1949, was just made for solitary interludes.

The Glass House. Picture: Tom Ferguson.

Home confinement over the past couple of months has forced many people to think more about their dwelling and how they would like it to function. Could we live with less? For most people, the answer has been a resounding yes, as they spend their weekends cleaning out cupboards and throwing things away and reassessing what is important to them. But could you live in a glass box with virtually no internal walls and just the bare essentials in the way of furniture? It’s an exercise in self-control that even Marie Kondo would find daunting.

Earlier this year, WISH was given rare access to visit and photograph The Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, designed by Philip Johnson and completed in 1949. The house is small and was definitely not built with a large family in mind. But as the coronavirus pandemic has forced the world into lockdown and people to spend much more time in their homes than they’re accustomed to, we thought it was potentially the perfect house to be isolated in (as long as your family unit is small), and an interesting study in what is fundamental to a comfortable life – and what isn’t.

The Glass House in Connecticut. Each of the four external walls is floor-to-ceiling glass punctuated by a centrally located glass door. Picture: Tom Ferguson.

Johnson, who died in 2005 at the age of 98, was a pioneer of the modernist (and later postmodernist) architectural movement. The Glass House, which he built as his own residence, can be viewed alongside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth house in Illinois (both built for private clients rather than the architects) as the three most influential American houses of the 20th century.

Despite the fact that Johnson worked until shortly before he died and designed hundreds of buildings around the world, it is the Glass House that critics frequently cite as his finest work. The American architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote of it: “The Glass House … is a set of buildings that would have assured Johnson a significant place in the history of American architecture had he done nothing else.”

Johnson originally purchased a 2ha plot of land about a 10-minute drive from the centre of New Canaan on which to build his dream home, and what would ultimately be a laboratory for his theories about architecture. Over the years, he expanded the property to its present 20ha and added several additional structures.

Guest quarters, known as the Brick House, were built at the same time as the main Glass House, in 1949. The two dwellings, each 16.5m in length, are linked to each other via a grassy court, which also contains a small round swimming pool. The Brick House was remodelled by Johnson in 1953, its three bedrooms transformed into just one plus a reading room.

The Glass House. Picture: Tom Ferguson.

Also on the site is an underground Painting Gallery, built in 1965, which displays Johnson’s significant modern art collection on a unique rotating rack system, like a large Rolodex for paintings. He was a major collector of abstract expressionist, Pop and minimalist art, and a significant donor to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he worked for a time as a curator. Among the paintings on display in Johnson’s gallery are works by Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Julian Schnabel.

A masonry sculpture gallery with a roof made entirely of glass was added in 1970. Johnson is said to have been so enamoured of his design for the gallery that he contemplated moving in and making it his residence, but he soon realised he would have nowhere to put his vast sculpture collection if he did.

A single-room library/study was added to the site in 1980 and looks like a pair of giant binoculars sitting in the landscape. From the book-lined study there is a framed view of the Ghost House, which Johnson built out of chain-link fencing and steel in an homage to the architect Frank Gehry, who made a name for himself early in his career with his use of everyday materials in house construction.

The Glass House. Picture: Tom Ferguson.

There are sculptural works by Donald Judd and Julian Schnabel, and a tower structure like a staircase to nowhere, designed by Johnson, on the site. In 1977 two monolithic concrete pillars were added to the entrance from the street, reminiscent of a medieval gate.

The final building constructed on the site, in 1995, is known as Da Monsta and sits just inside the gate. Johnson built it intending it to one day serve as a visitor centre, as he planned to donate the building to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and open it to the public after his death. The Glass House opened for tours, which run from mid-April to mid-December, in 2007. They now start offsite at a visitor centre just across from New Canaan station to avoid traffic congestion in the surrounding quiet suburban streets.

The tour takes in all the structures on the site, but it is undoubtedly The Glass House that people flock to see. The building is a piece of architecture that has become famous for its rigorous economy, and for the way it challenges conventional notions of what a house is. Tour numbers are strictly limited and need to be booked well in advance, and for fans determined to know what it’s really like to live in the house, an overnight stay is available for $US30,000 (however up to 10 guests can join you for dinner before you retire for the night).

The Glass House. Picture: Tom Ferguson.

The residence Johnson built for himself in 1949 caused a sensation even before it was finished. Droves of onlookers blocked traffic in the surrounding streets as they sought to get a glimpse of it after newspapers including the New York Times reported that an all-glass “fishbowl” was being built on the site. The construction of the house utilised a steel frame, which was innovative for a residential building the time. The four walls consist of floor-to-ceiling glass, as do the external doors. A round brick cylinder that contains the bathroom is the only opaque element in the building.

Surprisingly, the Glass House is much more spacious in real life than it appears in pictures. The structure has a generously high ceiling, and the various functions of the house – living, sleeping, cooking – are delineated by Johnson’s considered use of cabinetry and arranged throughout the floorplan perfectly, like a giant bento box. The lounge area is marked out with a rug that the architect used to refer to as a raft – floating on a sea of brick paving.

The Glass House. Picture: Tom Ferguson.

While the house is most definitely a fishbowl, particularly at night when it is lit from inside, it’s actually not that easily seen from the street. Even so, it was never Johnson’s intention to put its occupants on display. It was, in a way, the opposite: it was about bringing the outside in.

Blurring the line between inside and out is a hallmark of modern residential design today, but Johnson was a forerunner in distorting the distinction. The transparency of the walls allows the landscape outside – which Johnson shaped, planted and built meticulously over the decades – to flow right through the house. It’s a house for a life pared down to its essentials in an almost spiritual way.

Living in a glass box would no doubt be intimidating, and demand restraint when it comes to possessions and an obsession with neatness that most people would find challenging. But it’s an appealing and seductive fantasy – living a life with only the things you need, in a house that allows you to experience the outside world without leaving home.