The Philip Johnson Glass House

Description

The first authoritative book on the history of the Glass House property: Philip Johnson’s iconic modernist design fifty-year project, encompassing remarkable buildings, landscapes, and follies. From its completion in 1949 to the present day, Philip Johnson’s Glass House has drawn experts and onlookers from around the world to New Canaan, Connecticut, to experience what could be the most photographed modernist residence in the United States. The property, an architectural courtyard on forty-seven acres with eleven Johnson follies dating from 1949 to 1995, is an icon of 20th century architectural and landscape design. The book tells how Philip Johnson and David Whitney, the architect and plant man, lived on the property for decades and used the landscape as an ever-changing canvas for their designs, the result of a unique synthesis of influences and ideas from all history and geography. New research reveals Johnson and Whitney’s interaction with the landscape and the site’s evolution from a five-acre parcel to a world-renowned gentleman’s estate for modern times. Philip Johnson’s glass house, beautifully illustrated with old and commissioned photographs, will be a must for connoisseurs of architecture, landscape design, photography and social history.