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For almost three-quarters of a century, as a critic and curator beginning in the 1930s, and as a practicing architect since the 1940s, Philip Johnson has been at the centre of modern architecture's development. His celebrated Glass House, built in 1949 in New Canaan, Connecticut, is perhaps the single most famous house of the twentieth century. Until now, however, that house has not been looked at in the context of Johnson's many other house projects. This book, the first to comprehensively survey Johnson's residential work, not only brings to light a largely neglected side of Johnson's achievement, but freshly illuminates his entire career.

By examining all of Johnson's houses, authors Stover Jenkins and David Mohney, both architects, help us understand the Glass House as an expression of Johnson's developing thought. Focusing first on Johnson's student work at Harvard and his early commissions, they show how the Glass House reflects Johnson's concentrated study not only of pioneering modern architects including Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, but of masters of previous centuries such as Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Karl Friedrich Schinkel. They detail the three-year design process of the Glass House, and then show how Johnson moved beyond the influence of Mies to create a remarkably diverse body of work.

Supporting a critical account of approximately thirty built and forty unbuilt projects, the book includes numerous plans and drawings, many never before published, and historical photographs. New colour photographs by Steven Brooke capture the ways Johnson has used light, space, and landscape to create some of modernism's most appealing houses. Essential reading for architects and students, this book is also a vital resource for the study of one of modern architecture's most influential figures.