Now that you’ve finished reading this book, you have a veritable arsenal of ideas, strategies, and techniques for creating a modern home. Although you may have the tools to achieve the modern ideal, it’s just as important to understand that minimalism requires concessions and that there are exceptions to most rules.
You can learn a lot from books, but there’s no substitute for real-life experience. A student who’s memorized a driving manual can’t suddenly embark on a road trip without logging serious miles with an instructor. So before you can erect a truly modern home, it’s necessary to take a detailed look at the journey of a well-known modernist. Perhaps one of the best known minimalist homes in the United States is Philip Johnson’s “Glass House” in New Canaan, Connecticut (see Philip Johnson for more), making it a perfect case study for explaining the concept of concessions.
A pal and protégé of Mies van der Rohe, Johnson noted his mentor’s obsession with creating a building made entirely from steel and glass—without any solid “walls” to speak of, so minimal as to almost be invisible. Mies (as his students and friends called him) spent five years, from 1946 to 1951, designing and building the “Farnsworth House” on a sixty-two-acre estate outside of Chicago as a country retreat for client Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Johnson built his version of the see-through house in 1949.
So what can we learn about these two landmark structures, aside from the fact that you should never trust a sycophant who eagerly promotes your talent, while secretly harboring jealousies?
The Farnsworth house exists as a single, one-room structure. Johnson’s property in New Canaan features fourteen other buildings on the forty-seven-acre property. That’s right, fourteen different buildings, in which Johnson and his boyfriend, David Whitney, did all of their actual “living.”
There is the “Brick House,” a rectangular guesthouse adjacent to the Glass House, that holds all of the mechanicals to power both buildings, as well as an extra kitchen. The brick facade was supposed to be a counterpoint to the glass walls; it also hides the unsightly utilities. Nearby is a circular swimming pool.
There was a long lull in construction on the property. But then Johnson met Whitney in 1960, and the building frenzy began.
In 1962 Johnson built a pavilion around a square man-made pond where the couple could entertain guests outdoors, sip cocktails, and bask in the sun. In 1965 he built the subterranean “Painting Gallery” in a hillside, where he kept their extensive art collection, including a portrait of Johnson by Whitney’s best friend, Andy Warhol. In 1966, the couple bought “Popestead,” a late 1800s farmhouse that they remodeled during the next forty years, using it as a summer residence for family and friends, sometimes living in it themselves. In 1970, Johnson designed and built the “Sculpture Gallery,” which holds six floors of work by extremely high-profile artists.
In 1980 he built himself a studio, which looks like an upside-down cone, where he kept all his architecture books. In 1981, Whitney purchased “Calluna Farms,” where he lived; the walls were remade using the same pink stone Johnson sourced for his AT&T building in Manhattan. In 1984 they erected a steel-chain structure called “Ghost House,” which he and Whitney filled with lilies. In 1985 he installed the “Lincoln Kerstein Tower” (named after a writer who founded the New York City Ballet with George Balanchine), a chunky obelisk that is tricky to climb.
In 1995, in either a desperate bid for relevancy or a pathetic acquiescence to pop culture, he built “Da Monsta,” a crazy red thing that he intended to serve as a visitors’ center for the property when he died. In 1999, he and Whitney remodeled the “Grainger,” an eighteenth-century Shaker building that they updated to include an oversize window with a graffiti print etching by artist Michael Heizer. The Grainger was painted a custom shade of black created by Donald Kaufman, (a famous colorist) and the couple used it to watch television and drink tea. And, of course, they had apartments in Manhattan.
It’s said that each evening Johnson would walk around Da Monsta and pat it, no doubt content that he’d cemented his place in history. It’s also said that when Mies van der Rohe first saw the Glass House, he stormed out of the building in a furious huff. And once, a wild turkey ran through a wall of the Glass House, shattering it completely.
The lesson: Don’t have jealous friends or live near flocks of roving wild turkeys. And if you just can’t let go of your book collection, then it’s only logical to build a house for it. Or if you need a place to kick back and watch reality television, build another house. If your boyfriend is a world-famous art collector, build another house. And if you can’t figure out where to stash the circuit board and furnace—you guessed it— build another house. Because the only way to become a true minimalist is to be conspicuously maximalist.