People in Glass Houses- I

Yesterday, we got to view my dream dwelling- Philip Johnson's Glass House. However, as any student of architecture will tell you, the first "glass house" was conceived by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe - another favorite designer of mine.

The bummer here- and it is quite a bummer- is that in 1945 Mies was commissioned to build his idea of a dream home by a leading Chicago physician, Dr. Farnsworth. Legend has it that as a curator at MOMA, Johnson assembled an exhibit of Mies work in 1947, became inspired by the Farnsworth maquette and completed his own glass house by 1949, while Mies became locked up in a nasty legal battle with his client. The Farnsworth commission would not be completed until a year later and by that time Johnson would be forever memorialized as the beacon of the modernist movement in architecture. You see where I'm going with this sad, sad story?

To make matters worse, IMHO, Johnson's house was more beautiful and a more complex representation of the modernist sentiment than the Farnsworth house. But others will argue that the Farnsworth commission was full of the detailing that could only be devised by a designer as gifted as Mies. You should certainly see for yourselves-