A Case Study of The Glass House

A Case Study on the Glass House-Artificial Lighting

Building Type: A former residence converted into a museum Architect: Philip Johnson Location: New Canaan, Connecticut, U.S.A. Owner: Formerly owned by Philip Johnson; recently came under the preservation of The National Trust for Historic Preservation Year of Completion: 1949

The Glass House of Architect Philip Johnson, completed in 1949 is a revolutionary example of international style adapted into a domestic setting. It sits in a 47 acre, New Canaan estate. It occupies a floor space of 56 feet by 32 feet, a total of 1815 Square Feet open floor plan, and stands at 10.5 Feet enclosed in 18-feet-wide floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass between black steel piers and stock H-beams that anchored the glass in place. Each of the four exterior walls is punctuated by a centrally located glass door.

Floor layout and Elevations of the Glass House

A photo of the 18” glass panels

Johnson prides his Glass House but it was nothing near out of nowhere. It was according to him a stylistic mixture of Mies van der Rohe, Malevich, the Parthenon, the English garden, the whole Romantic Movement, the asymmetry of the 19th century. In other words, all these things are mixed up in it but basically it is the last of the modern, in the sense of the historic way we treat modern architecture today, the simple cube. The whole idea of the Glass House was from Mies Van der Rohe’s idea of creating an all glass house void of any opaque, solid walls. But Philip Johnson had contradicted the absurdness of this idea at first, he said in an interview:

Philip Johnson, Architect of the Glass House

“He (pertaining to Mies Van der Rohe) said you could do a glass house one day in the ’40s and I said you couldn’t because a glass house means that if you have a wall that sticks into the glass and then you’ve destroyed the glass-ness of the glass house. Therefore, you couldn’t have any walls. Well, in discussion, it comes out that any walls you want could be a separate little pavilion in the house, which in the case of my bathroom is the case. But the whole arrangement inside the house, the planning of the house, was done from a simple, Mies-ian arrangement of planes and blocks. That is, the closet into the bedroom makes one plane; the kitchen makes another, both of them anchored by the circular bathroom. That gives you an anchor from which the others radiate. This is simple asymmetry, simple 1920s thinking in terms of having an architecture that is not symmetrical. Then I put the whole thing in a symmetrical cage, denying, Mies

would have said, denying the whole point. But the house is not a Mies-ian house either. The symmetrical outside gave it calmness and organiz-ability of your eye that was very restful to me. Then you step inside and you get into the wild world of asymmetric planes and volumes. So I don’t know where it all came from except a great many ideas like Malevich, the Constructivists, but most especially Mies’ early designs for ideal, how you would arrange ideal spaces next to each other, sliding them, anchoring them and isolating them. So that’s what I’ve done here and you will notice that you can dominate the whole place from that room, that you can sit down on the central area, which is a rug, which is also in front of the fire, which is the aim of any house. When you enter a house, you, metaphorically you sniff like a dog, and sniffing the way a dog finds his place to sit down is to go round and round until he finds the epicenter of comfort and then curls up. And you do that without knowing it yourself when you enter a house. Where can I sit down? Where can I feel that my back won’t be attacked? Where do I feel in the center of things emotionally?”(From an interview conducted on behalf of the National Trust for Historic Preservation by Eleanor Devens, Franz Schultz, Jeffrey Shaw, and Frank Sanchis.) From which we can infer that the Glass House was a mixture of different ideas, but more inclined to Mies Van der Rohe’s design; although they differ much in the sense that the Glass House was designed to be a symmetrical enclosure for a very asymmetrical, “Miesan” furniture layout. This created a very calming and serene environment perfect for showcasing the surrounding landscape. However the house seems astoundingly uninhabitable, it is deemed as an iconic American home with its very traditional floor plan with its spaces articulated through placement of furniture and rugs. Its only difference from a traditional house was its envelope; but it is in no way a miss from providing a place where one may rest within. The glass exterior provides a means for letting the outside in, creating a very close-to-nature atmosphere where one can forget all the harsh realities of the modern world.

Interior photos of the Glass House

Its transparent design creates an almost non-existent boundary for sunlight to penetrate through. It is arguably a well-lit house during any day from sun up to sun down. Its accommodation of light makes it even more calming and serene as the abundance of light creates a feeling of safety. However the transparency of its walls may well be a problem in terms of solar shading. The solution of Johnson to this was highlighted through framing the house with trees. Trees are not only a visual aspect of the estate, creating a vista and providing visual continuity from the house to the landscape surrounding it, they also regulate the amount of light which can penetrate through the house.

Its glass panels allow for good daylighting

Site Layout showing position of trees in context to the house

-Trees serve as sun breakers filtering sunlight The transparency of the walls is not only a problem during day it is emphasized during night. The house creates a very questionable visual privacy. Normally a person would limit other's view of oneself. Inherent in human behavior is the tendency to avoid situations in which one can be watched without being aware of who is watching. Visual privacy can be achieved through the use of furnishings, partitions or walls. In this case the glass house lacks none of the latter. Although it created much dispute at first with the idea of maintaining transparency and visual connection to the estate after dark; he was so keen on the pleasure of being in the risk of being seen by someone. So as supposed to creating coverage for privacy, he together with Richard Kelly devised the Glass House to be a stage-like setting. To understand the development of Glass House’s lights one must know first the expanse of what lighting is during the era of the Glass House. During this era artificial lighting had reached a more aesthetic integration to an architectural space. Lighting for homes began to receive increasing attention due to popular press like the New York Times, Saturday Evening Post, Vogue, House and Garden, and Flair; they deemed electrical lighting as an aspect of home decoration rather than just technology or utility. In one of Kelly’s books he divided the primary roles of lighting into three: Attraction, Comfort, and Personality. Attraction is using light for creation of interest; to emphasize the good important features of the home. Comfort is the utilitarian aspect of lighting which we used for sewing, writing, reading, etc. Personality is truly the art of lighting, creating an individual character as set by the client.

Following these principles, Johnson and Kelly pushed for the use of artificial lighting to create specific visual environments that expressed the personality of Johnson. Primary considerations where given to the transparency of the glass walls, avoiding the glare artificial lights create, and the mirroring effects interior lights create at night. To achieve that, Kelly programmed exterior lights inset within the cornices at regular intervals pointing downward and flood lights buried in the trenches surrounding the house, just outside the walls directing beams of light up to the interior buried in a trench surrounding the house, just outside the glass walls, directed strong beams of light up onto the interior ceiling providing soft diffused illumination for the principal and functional lighting of the interior. Additionally each corner of the house is lit by canister lights Kelly also illuminated a strip of lawn around the perimeter of the house, forming a light-frame for the structure that emphasized the footprint of the pavilion and as well as the visual connectivity between inside and outside. The final layer in Kelly’s lighting plan reached out beyond the frame of the Glass House, bringing the surrounding landscape into focus with individual spot and floodlights placed at the base of selected Canister lights located at each corner of the house trees and mounted on the roof. Through the design of artificial light, Johnson and Kelly strengthened the outward reaching visual occupation and domestication of the surrounding landscape and stabilized the performance of the Glass House day and night. It also exaggerated that danger of being seen through the control of the visual environment, both within and outside, dissolving the fear into titillating exhibitionism. It allowed Johnson, the user, to maintain his controlling gaze over the property from the safety of the Glass House, while amplifying the stage-like setting of the Glass House after dark.

Glass House after Dark showing all its lighting features

However, the controlled precision that Johnson required of the Glass House, denies something of the human fallibility one necessarily expects of conventional domestic space (Lewis; O’Conner, 1994, p. 45). In other words, it may deny a user of the standard domestic comfort an “ordinary” house may provide. In one quote, Johnson had stated: “effect before everything.” The house itself is admittedly a very exhibitionistic house, almost unfit for habitation. No one would dare living in a fully transparent glass house; anyone would want a house which will grant us a safe zone to exploit every bit of privacy we can get as that is our personality. But in that sense, being a house for Philip Johnson who is a very flamboyant guy is undoubtedly in perfect harmony. The all glass walls and the lighting layout of the Glass House were made to fit his personality, and only his. The Glass House at night is a very stellar example of lighting for a house, both maintaining the utilitarian aspect of lighting in terms of making a user feel safe within his environment, and creating a visually astounding masterpiece reflecting the personality of the one who inhabits within it. The transparency of the Glass House achieved through lighting creates an unbelievably safe environment, as stated above; abundant lighting creates a feeling of being safe. Somehow the lack of walls is compensated through the marvel of its lighting. The lights also focus one’s vision to the house itself without taking away from the environment. It forms juxtaposition between the house and its surroundings ultimately creating a total composition. It uses light both in ways that will give dimension to it and creating an exaggeration thus attaining a focal point and in giving an atmosphere of safety. It is an epitome of modern use of lighting which does not only focus on function but on showcasing the owner’s personality and the beauty and aesthetics of a composition. It is in that way a marvel of electrical lighting.

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