"The vault and the box are two recurring themes in the history of architecture. Few boxes have ever reached the degree of sophistication to be found in Johnson's steel-framed Glass House. Inside the transparent box, objects and fittings (for example the free-standing 'buffet bar') take on the significance of chess pieces—checkmate produces a perfect ambiance! The éminence grise behind the design is Mies, and so is also (as a number of critics have playfully suggested) an eclectic pot-pourri ranging from Choisy's Acropolis plan, Schinkel's Casino, Mies's own Farnsworth House sketches and IIT plan, Ledoux's rationalism and possibly even Malevitch's 1913 'Circle' painting."

— Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. p173.

"The completely open glass and steel house is the major element of an architectural composition which includes outdoor sculpture and a separate blank-walled brick guest house. Spatial divisions in the glass building are achieved by a brick cylinder containing a bathroom, and by low walnut cabinets—one of them containing kitchen equipment. The red brick floor and cylinder are waxed to bring out a cold purple overtone. The steel is painted dark gray; steps and railing are of white granite."

— Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Arthur Drexler, ed. Built in the USA: Post-war Architecture. p73.

"Philip Johnson, one of the early advocates of the Modern Movement in the United States and one of the first architects to point to its shortcomings in the fifties, designed, in his own Glass House, one of the world's most beautiful yet least functional houses; it was never envisioned as a 'home' (house) to live in but a life-style stage to live with. Ostensibly entirely in l'esprit nouveau of the Modern Movement, it was a building really expressing many concerns of classic design, from the elevated placement of an object in a space, to its serene proportion, general overall symmetry, and combining of a balance of elements with a meticulous refinement of detail...."

— Paul Heyer. American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth Century. p12.

"He designed a small, boxy house, also highly influenced by Mies, for a client in Sagaponack, Long Island, in 1946, but his first significant building, and still perhaps his most famous, was not for another client at all but, like the Cambridge house, for his own use: it was the Glass House in New Canaan, completed in 1949 with its counterpoint, a brick guest house.

"The serene Glass House, a 56-foot-by-32-foot rectangle, is generally considered one of the 20th century's greatest residential structures. Like all of Mr. Johnson's early work, it was inspired by Mies, but its pure symmetry, dark colors and closeness to the earth marked it as a personal statement: calm and ordered rather than sleek and brittle. ...

"The compound was willed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which plans to run it as a museum."

— Paul Goldberger, "Philip Johnson Is Dead at 98; Architecture's Restless Intellect", New York Times, 2005.0127.

The Creator's Words

"The painters have every advantage over us today...Besides being able to tear up their failures—we never can seem to grow ivy fast enough—their materials cost them nothing. They have no committees of laymen telling them what to do. They have no deadlines, no budgets. We are all sickeningly familiar with the final cuts to our plans at the last moment. Why not take out the landscaping, the retaining walls, the colonnades? The building would be just as useful and much cheaper. True, an architect leads a hard life—for an artist."

"...Comfort is not a function of beauty... purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful...sooner or later we will fit our buildings so that they can be used...where form comes from I don't know, but it has nothing at all to do with the funcitional or sociological aspects of our architecture."

— Philip Johnson. from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p279.

Details

56 feet by 32 feet in plan

American Institute of Architects 25 Year Award, 1975