Mies' Farnsworth House (vs Johnson's Glass House)
Philip Johnson's Glass House (click for another photospread):
Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House (click the pic for a very nice photospread):
Yes, there do seem to be more than a few similarities, don't there? It's because there are. As one commenter here
notes:
According to the tour guide for the Farnsworth house, van de Rohe gave the plans to Johnson prior to building his own house, and Johnson used the plans to build his version.Wikipedia offers a quite complete entry about the Farnsworth House, as does Columbia Universty. Columbia's entry even includes architectural drawings and construction pictures.
I think in the end that you have to give pride of place to Mies van der Rohe. As Johnson himself said:
“I pointed out to him (Mies) that it (a glass house) was impossible because you had to have rooms, and that meant solid walls up against the glass, which ruined the whole point. Mies said, ‘I think it can be done.’”Still, just as a personal preference, I like Johnson's expression of Mies' idea just a little bit better.
Comments
I have a copy of the May 1953 House Beautiful that has a lengthy article about the Farnsworth House and how it is a prime example of "Bad Modern Homes!!" It details all the back story that led to Dr. Edith Farnsworth suing Mies over the home: "It is poised in the middle of a small field like a fishbowl or, better, like an emptied aquarium on a steel stand. It has cost Dr. Farnsworth about $73,000 so far." Further into the article they quote the visionary Dr. thus: "Something should be done about such architecture as this...or there will be no future for architecture." The whole article is a favorite of mine...so wrong!
Posted by: E_Vetter | October 17, 2007 02:37 PM
E. Vetter, if you'd like to scan that article and email it to me, I'd be happy to publish it.
Posted by: Bill Quick | October 17, 2007 03:30 PM