I’m at work on a book about Buckminster Fuller and recently came across a statement by Philip Johnson about Fuller.

“Bucky Fuller was no architect,” said Johnson. “We all hated him because he really thought the profession was unnecessary.” Fuller, it should be noted, referred to architects as “exterior decorators” and frequently dismissed their role.

The Glass House, designed by Johnson, and the geodesic dome designed by Fuller, seem to be absolute opposites, but it can be argued that they are both Utopian artifacts coming from radically different perspectives.

I’m curious about this apparent rift between these two contemporaries and leaders in design.

Traditional versus modern architecture; Proponents of traditional architecture cite a preference for historical styles. Modernist proponents, myself included, prefer architecture that responds to its larger contemporary context.

Today, university campuses are shaping cities more than ever as they expand, rebuild, and often partner and “co-locate” with community and business ventures. Even while universities batten down for the rise of place-less, online education, cities around the globe are building campuses in bricks and mortar (and steel and glass) at a dizzying pace. The “campus experience” is a still-powerful ideal and practice. At the same time, the city, or at least the idea of the city, has become a driver for the physical and programmatic form of academic and corporate campuses. Both students and recent graduates—for many of whom university campuses are the de facto training ground in urban life—seem to want to be in places that have the busy vibrancy and easy amenities of both campus and town center. Cities want to be like campuses, and campuses want to be like cities.

Photo: The Glass House

Two inaugural shows launched the Glass House exhibition program in the fall of 2012: Frank Stella: Scarlatti Kirkpatrick and Night (1947–2015). The exhibition program is part of a strategic initiative introduced by the new director of the Glass House, Henry Urbach, who is leading efforts to rededicate the site as a lively, creative cultural center consistent with the spirit and values of its former occupants, renowned architect Philip Johnson and independent curator and editor David Whitney. The Glass House also inaugurated a fresh flowers program, bringing new life to the interior of the Glass House. In the coming seasons, we will develop more ambitious projects, and are currently exploring new programs and activities that will strengthen the liveliness and relevance of our site. Educational programs continue to take center stage, as we host monthly Conversations in Context, Glass House Conversations, and think tanks both on site and in the field, including our first participation in this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. In time, we hope to add site-specific initiatives including residency programs, performances, and scholarly and community gatherings.

The work of a number of artists provoke a compelling examination of the intersection and boundaries between architecture and sculpture. Whether it is Richard Serra’s large, undulating ribbons of steel or the intimate, organic, ceramic sculptures of Ken Price, these convergences invite serious considerations about their relationships to architectural forms.

Could this formula, often applied to post-war and contemporary art, work for older works of art such as Stonehenge or Versailles? Or be applied to work that reaches beyond the visual arts, such as audio, tactile, culinary, etc.?

This Glass House Conversation is the third installment, and a continuation of the latest Promiscuous Encounters, a seminar presented at the 2012 Istanbul Design Biennial, and launched by students from the Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture Program.

The students–Francisco Díaz, Nina Valerie Kolowratnik, Marcelo López-Dinardi and Marina Otero Verzier–will extend the discussion here, as hosts of this online conversation.

Brutalism, also referred to as New Brutalism, is a highly controversial topic in modern preservation. A defining architectural style of the postwar era—characterized by severe, abstract geometries and the use of cast concrete, block and brick—Brutalism arguably produced some of the world’s least popular public buildings.

In the latter half of the 20th century critics Alison and Peter Smithson and Reyner Banham defined Brutalism as an ethic rather than an aesthetic. Today the ethical issue of preserving Brutalist buildings, versus contemporary aesthetic preferences, must be considered as many Brutalist structures —Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, Marcel Breuer’s Ameritrust Tower, Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center, Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens, and Gillespie, Kidd and Coia’s St. Peter’s Seminary, to name a few—are now threatened with demolition.