7/28/2019 library listt.docx

1/2

Glass houses

"Im a plagiarist man you see, you must take everything fromeverybody"

Philip Johnson, interview with Susan Sontag.

With all the press jouissance over the possibility of a clone of a Zaha Hadid

project in China being completed before the original, there is a historicalprecedent of the copy preceding the original, in perhaps the greatest act of

architectural plagiarism to date. The story concerns two of the most famous

buildings of the Modern Movement, The Farnsworth House by Mies van der

Rohe, and Philip Johnson's Glass House.

The original in this scenario in Mies' Farnsworth House, planned in 1945 For

Mrs Farnsworth in Plano, Illinois, but completed in 1951. A model wasexhibited at the MOMA in 1947, at a show about modern architecture part

curated by, you guessed it, Philip Johnson. Johnson was able to design and build

The Glass House for himself quicker than Mies, with his project completed in1949 and subsequently widely published in the architectural press.

Mies was understandably said to be furious, partly because he thought people

would conclude that his was the derivative work. And it's not difficult to see the

direct influence of one upon the other, both being essentially glass boxes, withfull height glazing, and a flat roof supported by edge mounted columns giving

an entirely free plan, with a central service core. There are differences of course,primarily the raised platform upon which the Farnsworth House sits, and the

white paintwork. In contrast, the Glass House sits into the ground more, and

with its darker colouring, sits more within the landscape than against it. InJohnson's Glass House, the corner columns together with the floor and roof

slabs creates a box-like frame, whereas Mies, in moving the columns inwards,

dissolves the edges and make the horizontal elements float more.

David Holowka, in a wonderful article on his Architakes blog, calls Johnson's

iterations "history's worst case of the anxiety of influence", and later recallsFranz Schulze, "biographer of both men, states in Philip Johnson, Life and

Work, that Mies belabored Johnson 'not for having copied him but for trying toand failing.'"

Johnson went through many variations in his design for the Glass House,

somewhere between 27 (the official view) and 79 (according to his assistant

Landis Gores). As the Architakes article describes: "After 25 tries, Johnsons

tortured resignation that the Farnsworth House was not to be improved upon is

on full view in penultimate scheme 26s nearly actionable plagiarism of its

plan.",

http://formsofinquiry.com/inquiry/philip-johnson-interviewed-by-susan-sontaghttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/ultratravel/9786754/Pirated-Zaha-Hadid-building-under-construction-in-China.htmlhttp://www.architakes.com/?p=2097http://www.architakes.com/?p=2097http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/ultratravel/9786754/Pirated-Zaha-Hadid-building-under-construction-in-China.htmlhttp://formsofinquiry.com/inquiry/philip-johnson-interviewed-by-susan-sontag

7/28/2019 library listt.docx

2/2

Mies and Johnson continued to have an uneasy professional relationship,

working together on the Seagram building in New York. Mies visited Johnson

at the Glass House in 1955, but famously refused to stay there. "After a night of

drinking, Mies picked at the Glass House's details until Johnson indirectly

retaliated by challenging the greatness of one of Mies's favorite buildings,Berlage's Amsterdam Stock Exchange. In a 1985 interview by Robert A.M.Stern published in The Philip Johnson Tapes, Johnson describes Miess quietlyangry response: "Im not staying here tonight. Find me another place to stay."

Here is a short Sarah Morris' 2010 film 'Points on a Line':

Sarah Morris "Points on a Line" from Sarah Morris on Vimeo.

Who owns an architectural idiom? After all, Mies didn't invent modernist

architecture or the idea of building a house from steel and glass, even if we can

admit that the Farnsworth House represents a high-water mark for Modernism.

We can sense that Johnson's Glass house has crossed a boundary between

inspiration and plagiarism, without being able to explain fully why. It is a fuzzy

boundary, and any artistic endeavour will alway find it hard to separateinspiration from duplication. As far as I know, the rules of copyright do not

apply to architecture in the same way that they do not apply to fashion.

Buildings and clothes are both regarded as utility, and therefore unable to beregistered.

It is only Western architecture of the 20th century that began to prizeuniqueness in architectural designs so highly, and denigrate similarity and

duplication in favour of a radical individuality. Johnson's building, while

certainly derivative, ultimately arrives at a different destination from the Mies

house. While the Farnsworth House sits against the landscape, the Glass House

rests within it, and both solutions are equally valid. Unlike the Chinese clone ofa Hadid design, it is not simply a context-free rip-off.

http://vimeo.com/41845278http://vimeo.com/user4010809http://vimeo.com/http://vimeo.com/http://vimeo.com/user4010809http://vimeo.com/41845278