Think On It

Another triumph for classic modern design

June 5th, 2007

Glass House

The first time I saw a photograph of this house, I thought, “Well, yes, of course.” It seemed perfect. The only enclosed place was the bathroom, which seemed correct to me. It was never built to be the one and only house in which you did everything that makes part of your life. Here you do the things anybody might see, because they can.

It doesn’t even now so many decades later have a huge future, because it must be built in acreage. Otherwise it would be like living with a webcam permanently registering your life at home– or like living in Great Britain, where there are apparently CCTV watching you and now even talking to you if it doesn’t like what you’re doing.

Enormous acreage can’t be our future, unless you are willing to farm it all right up to your patio.

Think on this: this house was designed in 1949. It encompasses a purity that has hardly ever been matched since and certainly not before, unless we drag Brancusi’s sculptures into architectural discourse. It is exactly what it must be and not one thing more. You live in nature. Nature can come up to your wall and press it’s moist noise against it and stare at you doing whatever it is you do. Nature could use it’s muddy paws to leave a frieze along the bottom of your walls.

From the inside, if you cook steamy and greasy foods you will obscure the view. The job of keeping those glass walls sparkling could both improve your diet and make you hate nature.

All that considered, I still love this house and the purist view of living that it requires. I so disliked Johnson’s Chippendale frilled ATT building of the latter 20th century

ATT building

that it seems impossible that the same man was responsible for both buildings. How can anything be post-modern? Are we not, even those most tradition bound of us, modern by default?

The images are linked from IHT.com and http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/att/ which are both sites worth exploring.

Entry Filed under: Heroes, Beauty

8 Comments Add your own

1. eg | June 5th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

The only time I think I would like the glass house is if I lived somewhere really cold and this allowed me to feel as though I were outside without actually being outside, otherwise I would just as soon have a nice screened porch and a bit more privacy. I don’t hate the Chippendale building, considering what office buildings usually look like.
2. Judith | June 5th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

If I told you he planned in and built a dark alley would you still like it?

I just don’t see the point of the pediment. His other skyscraper called the Lipstick building is much better, IMO.
3. Judith | June 5th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

Oh yes, I forgot: the deer wouldn’t be able to see you get dressed or bathe.
4. eg | June 5th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

The dark alley seems a little weird. I\’ve seen worse ways than the pediment to distinguish a building — like the toilet bowl building in Tyson\’s.

And everyone knows deer aren\’t the perverts….
5. Judith | June 5th, 2007 at 3:20 pm

I thought that was why you hated the WV bathroom?
6. eg | June 5th, 2007 at 3:59 pm

No. I didn’t like walking across a bridge, in the dark, to be in a little windowless building where any old murderer/psycho might be lurking behind. AND it was full of spiders!
7. KC | June 7th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

I never cared for the pediment either. I’ve been desperately trying to remember an anecdote one of my professors used to tell about Johnson and Robert Venturi insulting one another’s buildings. (Johnson made fun of the Vanna Venturi house and Venturi came up with something smart-alecky about the AT&T building.) Oh, well. I suppose it’ll come to me eventually.
8. eg | June 7th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

I’d like to know how many people wonder why there is a building named after a bunch of cheesy strippers?