Philip Johnson’s legendary Glass House, along with a number of other structures on his estate, is now open for public tours. I’m definitely adding this to the places I would like to go and see! Of course, according to the article, the tours are sold out for the next year or more already.

Also of note is the fact that the museum curators made extensive use of Apple products for the design of informative exhibits. The Apple Pro page contains a profile showcasing the technology that is used at the Glass House.

The New York Times features a review of the architecture of the Glass House as well as a brief over view of Philip Johnson’s relationship to the architectural movements of the twentieth century.

It is unlikely that any single person will ever hold so much sway over the profession again, but we are beginning to view his legacy with a bit more clarity.

Nowhere is this more evident than at the 47-acre estate that Johnson built for himself here over a span of nearly 50 years and that opened to the public last month. A collection of 14 structures that includes the legendary Glass House, completed in 1949; a guesthouse; an art gallery; and a sculpture pavilion, the complex survives as an enticing voyage through the ups and downs of late-20th-century architecture set in a dreamy landscape of rolling lawns and maple trees.

But as imposing as it is as a historical landmark, it is as telling about his weaknesses as a designer as about his influence as an advocate for architecture. Its uneven collection of architectural follies is an expression of a man more notable for a restless imagination and insatiable cultural appetites than for his gifts as an architect.

Take the Glass House. For all its fame, the house is an imperfect work. A simple glass box supported by slender steel pillars, it was once one of the most famous houses in the United States. To sit here with Johnson was to enter the heart of the American cultural establishment, and its celebrity may have done more to make Modernism palatable to the country’s social elites than any other structure of the 20th century.

It is also a legitimate aesthetic triumph. On a gorgeous New England day, the play of its glass surfaces creates a layering of images, from reflections of the surrounding trees to the shadowy silhouettes of people walking around inside. And the classical references alluded to by its thin brick base and the symmetrical proportions of its frame demonstrate the range of Johnson’s historical knowledge.

Yet it is also easy to see why Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a pillar of early Modernism and Johnson’s mentor, stormed out in a huff when he saw it. The house was famously influenced by Mies’s Farnsworth House, which was designed before Johnson’s Glass House but built, in Illinois, several years later, leaving the impression that the student had leapfrogged over his master. More important, Johnson’s vision lacked the intellectual rigor and exquisite detailing that were so critical to Mies’s genius. The steel I-beams that mark the corners of the Glass House are clumsily detailed — especially disconcerting in a work of such purity.

The complete article from The New York Times: “Through a Glass, Clearly, a Modernist’s Questing Spirit”