From the Ground Up is a series on Archinect focused on discovering the early stages & signs of history's most prolific architects. Starting from the beginning allows us to understand the long journey architecture takes in even the most formative of hands and the often, surprising shifts that occur on its journey. These early projects grant us a glimpse into the early, naive, ambitious—and at points, rough—edges of soon to be architectural masters.

As students of architecture, we deal with scale models of our future ambitions. We consider the details of what would or could be there, we find the space as it could be and we look forward to the day that those will come to fruition.  Yet few, if any, believe it is possible to take their academic curiosity and attempt to construct it down the street from the academic halls they wander and yet, Philip Johnson's first building did just that. 

...with 9 Ash, Johnson makes an artifact of architectural desire that will pull both visually and conceptually through all his future works. 

Philip Johnson’s first building came to life while still enrolled at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. By the time Johnson was enrolled in Harvard he was already in possession of a network and phonebook that would rival his professors at the time. All this cultural and political capital was even further enforced and backed by financial security from his families investment history. 

The design of Johnson's 9 Ash is a open courtyard based concept with a direct connection to his Miesian influence as well as benefiting from the modernist agenda that he had already positioned himself within. While his later domestic projects would find success in their folly like existence, his early work's geographical location was far from it. Located in the center of Cambridge, blocks away from Harvard itself, 9 Ash is a conceptual inversion of his later glass house. It aims inwards, allowing for the full property to be wrapped by a 9ft wall that then grants the actual home the ability to facilitate a glass house-ness transparency in a suburban context. In the same manner that Le Corbusier's Paris penthouse erases the context with its out of scale walls and allows only a censored visual and audio experience to penetrate the outdoor program, Johnson uses the vertical walls as a means to erase the street but allowing a particular image of suburbia to leak into the property.  

In the same manner that Le Corbusier's Paris penthouse erases the context with its out of scale walls and allows only a censored visual and audio penetrate the outdoor program..

That's not to say this is an unaesthetic piece of work from the exterior but to the contrary, it produces an isolationistic approach to a suburban neighborhood while giving away nothing to the walker by. One could pass by Johnson's home and better see it is a construction barricade rather than a line separating suburbia from Johnson's architectural playground, the only hint being a white door along the perimeter implying some sensation of entry or facade. 

Even at such an early point in his career, Johnson was negotiating the idea of external reference versus internal context. Hinting at future endeavors such as the Seagram Building where the building itself becomes both a positive and negative as a means of creating a buffer for public or outdoor engagement. Even though it is one of Johnson’s earliest works, with 9 Ash, Johnson makes an artifact of architectural desire that will pull both visually and conceptually through all his future works.