Sep 19
2011
Architects have critiqued the Glass House since its earliest days in 1949.
Frank Lloyd Wright said “Am I inside or am I outside?” Mies van der Rohe was offended by its corners. Contemporary architects echo these and other issues.
So, why do architects, designers, artists, and ordinary people still journey
from all over the world to marvel at it, to be thrilled by it, to sometimes
even weep within it?
What makes the Glass House sublime?
Rena gave the final word
Power, guilt, passion, light, balance, translucence, unconscious subconscious, and shared memories have all been invoked during this Conversation—reaffirming, I think, the Glass House’s evocation of sublime. Tomas de Monchaux, while acknowledging a “residue” of Johnson’s power, challenges us as an historic site because, he claims, the angels and demons have fled. Paul Goldberger Tweeted his approval of that statement, but I wonder…. Estevan Rael Galvez’ lyrical comments reference the basic truth that the inside of this house IS the outside, and vice versa, allowing us to make references past and present, personal and primordial. Is there anything wrong with bringing our own angels and demons along? Do they enhance or harm the experience of any site? Do they not in any case, imbue the site with life?
Monday, September 26 at 12:37pm
It would be easy to go back to the theories of the sublime and the beautiful and suggest that the Glass House is sublime because it is, as Kant suggests, unbounded. I think it is more illuminating to consider at Burke’s Enquiry in to the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful and the suggestion that pleasure can come from the removal of pain, darkness and uncertainty. If we consider sublime in relation to the terms picturesque and beautiful, it is more aggressive, visceral, irrational. He describes the Sublime in this passage:
“I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer, are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible body could enjoy.”
Whereas in his section on beauty he states the following:
“But man, who is a creature adapted to a greater variety and intricacy of relation, connects with the general passion, the idea of some social qualities, which direct and heighten the appetite which he has in common with all other animals; and as he is not designed like them to live at large, it is fit that he should have something to create a preference, and fix his choice; and this in general should be some sensible quality; as no other can so quickly, so powerfully, or so surely produce its effect.”
So do we see the Glass house as the removal of pain? Is it a place that suggests darkness or uncertainty. Perhaps in the context of society and Johnson’s personal life it does.
Tuesday, September 20 at 11:53pm
What typically impresses the curious mind ? Why do people get inspired or elevated to another level of happiness from a great bottle of wine; a Harley-Davidson; walking their child to school or listening to NPR while driving? People collect watches and vinyl records. I collect visual experiences from design. Perhaps, it’s the attainment of power that we acquire each time we repeat an act or experience. I find it a lonely experience, but peaceful. With each visit to the house (looking- in & looking-out), I feel I’m getting closer to understanding the beauty.
Friday, September 23 at 3:00pm
I had the pleasure to visit the Glass House when it was first re-opened and had a wonderful Guide named Perry walk my Partner and me through the buildings and grounds. Having been interested in this house long before it was re-opened I had read so much about how Johnson stole the “idea” from under Mies Van der Rohe who at the time was building the Farnsworth House (let’s face it, Johnson was a wealthy anti-Semite with an interest in architecture but neither the real talent or education to support it beyond his dabblings). Van der Rohe’s reaction to the house had less to do with the bad corners (although he was right as has been documented — that’s’ why the house sustained annual water damage because Johnson had NO idea how to craft a flat roof design as Mies Van der Rohe did and proved) and more to do with how betrayed he felt by Johnson who had been a friend at one time as history has reported in books, articles. All that said, it is hard not to be completely overwhelmed by how beautiful the structure is and the setting that was created by careful attention to everything around it including the other buildings (well, all of them except that eyesore after the front gate “Da Monsta”. I recall getting dizzy while standing inside that structure!)
Friday, September 23 at 5:46pm
Rena gave the Final Word
John brings up some well-known issues that may be subjects of future on-line conversations, particularly as he mentions only the most negative episodes in a long life of change. Change may be what best describes Johnson, in attitudes, philosophies and design. And like most of us, some friendships–and mentorships–had their ups and downs. I am so glad John finally voices the overwhelming beauty of the experience of the Glass House, da Monsta notwithstanding.
In commenting as he does, he references Susannah’s lesson on “the” sublime, and illustrates that Johnson had indeed been in some dark places in his past, and was with the Glass House perhaps announcing his interest in returning to the light.
Monday, September 26 at 12:37pm
I have only recently been able to visit the Glass House twice, each visit far too brief and perhaps distracted. Yet, as I think of those moments, as exquisite as the the art and the design is, in that moment, it also disappeared effortlessly and thus enabled me to glimpse below a boundary of consciousness, dividing the inside from the outside. I stood there transfixed, interrupted only by someone’s voice asking what I was looking at.
I could not answer in that moment, but as I stood at the edge of glass looking into the valley of trees before me, I immediately thought of Carl Jung, whose thoughts about the sublime were so intricately correlated with the unconsciousness. Perhaps it was because I was already longing for home, but that day, I thought of when Jung visited New Mexico in 1924 and describing his trip to Taos Pueblo. Of that visit, he wrote:
I stood by the river and looked up at the mountains, which rise almost another six thousand feet above the plateau. I was just thinking that this was the roof of the American continent…Suddenly, a deep voice, vibrant with suppressed emotion, spoke from behind me into my left ear: “Do you not think that all life comes from the mountains?” An elderly Indian had come up to me, inaudible in his moccasins, and had asked me this heaven knows how far-reaching question. A glance at the river pouring down from the mountain showed me the outward image that had engendered this conclusion. Obviously all life came from the mountain, for where there is water, there is life.”
The Taos Mountain is nearly two thousand miles away from this place and compared to the Glass House, Taos Pueblo is ancient. Jung himself noted, in Taos “you will feel the old, old root of human consciousness…” Yet, for whatever reason, as I glimpsed out the window, I was able to see the trees and past them, to another time, another place. As a native of the Southwest, where the earthen adobe or mud walls are hand-molded and plastered annually like prayers at the hands of women and children, the idea of being in a glass house is in many ways so foreign, and yet I felt close and connected. For me, this is what makes the Glass House sublime.
Tuesday, September 27 at 8:47pm
The sublime experience for each guest is so very personal, like Estevan’s comments – we all bring a story or experience that is meaningful ; then we overlap these thoughts and ideals in a way that almost completes the circle in our mind. Whether these emotions evokes darkness or a removal of pain as Susannah mentions, I agree with Rena’s overall concept of change. The changes that occur beyond our control and the change that Philip experienced throughout his life- helps to create the most absolute (sublime) moment.
Wednesday, September 28 at 11:14am
Short answer: Nothing.
Long answer: The Glass House, along with its outbuildings and landscape, is the Quintessence of the art-historical Picturesque: artful, mannered, comfortable, pleasurable, pretty, tasteful, controlled, and gratifyingly (in the comedy of its details and author descriptions) candid about its own artifice.
The Sublime about the house, if any, is in the memory of the Power of its former occupant as tastemaker and would-be kingmaker for three or four generations of the architectural profession in the United States and elsewhere. Or seeming power, which is much the same thing. That’s where Burke’s holy terror comes into the picture.
It might be a Law that any building whose author aims directly for Sublimity is guaranteed to miss it, since a visitor’s awareness of its author’s realized intentions would seem to undermine the encounter with Uncertainty and Other that the Sublime, whatever it is, requires. That’s why the Haunted House at Disneyland isn’t actually spooky. Buildings seem to acquire Sublime connotations by—as in this case—associations with terrifying or inspiring historical events, or by returning to Nature, in the form of ruins. Or by being Fenway Park.
Johnson, debatably and infamously, cited postwar ruins as one of the many canny inspirations for this house. Maybe one of the strange convergences here is that the current glass house is a kind of residue or ruin of Johnson’s kind of power. The building’s current and gratifying democratic openness, thanks to the National Trust, is a wonderfully weird projection past the house’s history as a sanctum sanctorum. But it does mean that visiting the Glass House, for today’s Young Romantic Architect, is a bit like visiting a deconsecrated cathedral or a czar’s palace or prison once it’s been turned into an edifying museum. The angels and demons have fled.
Maybe there’s still a little devil in the details. About those corners: I just visited the place for the first time to hear the wise and witty conversation of architects Gregg Pasquarelli and Philip Nobel, and was able to observe that they (the corners, and also, for that matter, the conversationalists), are just perfect. Certainly almost alright. The building is longer than wide, thus it makes both visual and (marginal) structural sense for the flanges of those “i-beam” columns to be parallel to the long axis: if one considers all eight of those columns, and not merely the four extremities, one finds that while there may be assorted crimes, lapses, and contemptible failures to discuss here, shoddy corners are not among them.
Thursday, September 29 at 1:55am
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
Glass House Conversations
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For those who have not yet visited the Glass House, have you ever experienced the sublime in architecture? What makes a place sublime?
Tuesday, September 20 at 5:47am