Archive for Farnsworth House

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Johnson’s Glass House

While the impracticalities of life in a glass box rendered the Farnsworth House an unlikely model for the mainstream housing market, the concept fascinated many architects. In 1949 Philip Johnson (b. 1906) began work on his own residence in New Canaan, Connecticut. In some ways, the Farnsworth and Johnson houses studies in contrast. Painted white [...]

Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe

In 1946, Mies van der Rohe designed a weekend retreat for Dr. Edith Farnsworth in Plano, Illinois, near Chicago. A number of architects including Richard Neutra and Buckminster Fuller had grappled with the practical problems of using metal-framed structural systems for domestic design but no one idealized the concept to the degree Mies did in [...]