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Christopher Hawthorne previews the restoration of Philip Johnson's Brick House ahead of May reopening

2024-04-29T11:49:00-04:00

The reopening returns a certain architectural equilibrium to Johnson’s estate. The original paired structures, said Kirsten Reoch, who was named executive director of the Glass House campus last summer, “are two parts of a whole. Neither was conceived without the other. So the idea that we’ve been showing and interpreting half the story, it kind of blows your mind.”

The Glass House is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year with a special Paper Log House installation from Shigeru Ban and other public programs through the end of December. Yale’s senior critic Christopher Hawthorne visits the New Canaan, Connecticut, campus for a preview and says, “Bringing visitors back to the Brick House, with its resolute insistence on privacy, is an opportunity to explore the relationship of its architecture to Johnson’s homosexuality,” as well as an opportunity to reexamine its designer’s fraught politics.

The restored Brick House (whose work was overseen by the National Trust’s Mark Stoner) reopens to the public this Thursday, May 2nd.

Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House opens at The Glass House with the help of Cooper Union architecture students

2024-04-17T06:00:00-04:00

Archinect has received first photos of Shigeru Ban Architects’ new collaborative installation project with students from The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.

A product of this semester’s Building Technology course, Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House honors the 75th anniversary of one of America’s foremost examples of modernism with a special nine-month run that began this week, April 15th, and will run until December 15th.

Students from The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union cut and sort components for the Paper Log House’s top connector in the school workshop. Video still by Hudson Lines

Students slot preassembled sections of paper tube walls into crenelated base panels along the perimeter of the floor. Video still by Hudson Lines

Working together with a team from the Pritzker Prize winner’s New York office, a group of 39 students engaged in a two-day assembly process that created a 13.5 by 13.5-...

Shigeru Ban and the Cooper Union to exhibit Paper Log House at The Glass House's 75th anniversary

2024-02-05T19:37:00-05:00

Shigeru Ban Architects have announced a special project that will help commemorate the 75th anniversary of the realization of Philip Johnson’s soon-to-be restored Brick House, the smaller outbuilding included at the site of the landmarked Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.

The firm made public its plans for a collaborative design-build with students from The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, via LinkedIn.

The project will be enacted on the Glass House grounds beginning April 15 and extending to the 15th of December of this year for public exhibition. On display will be the same Paper Log House prototype Ban and his Voluntary Architects’ Network have deployed recently in Turkey, Morocco, Japan, and Ukraine. Ban says his team will work with a group of 36 students to realize the prototype, marking its first North American installation in six years.

Johnson of cou...

Frank Lloyd Wright's Tirranna home sells for $6 million in Connecticut

2024-01-30T14:58:00-05:00

A treasured Frank Lloyd Wright home once resided in by the architect himself has sold for a reported $6 million in suburban New Canaan, Connecticut. The house is one of Wright’s largest designs and was purchased for $2 million below the original $8 million asking price that was published with its first listing in June 2023.

Tirranna House was originally built for the local Rayward family in 1955 and features seven bedrooms with eight full bathrooms in a horseshoe plan covering some 7,861 square feet on 14 acres of land. It has had just four owners in the subsequent 70 years, according to Robb Report. Wright lived in the home during the construction of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York after 1956 and incorporated some of the same clerestory windows used in the museum’s design into the home’s greenhouse, which is joined by a guest residence, five-car garage, converted wine cellar, and barn.

Image courtesy Houlihan Lawrence

Featuring a lively palette of Philippine mahogany ...

Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Tirranna’ home in New Canaan, CT for sale

2017-01-13T13:52:00-05:00

For the first time in 20 years, Frank Lloyd Wright‘s “Tirranna” home in New Canaan, CT is on the market. The home was built just before his death on a 15-acre wooded estate, has been listed for $8M by the estate of its long-time owner, the late memorabilia mogul and philanthropist Ted Stanley. Though renovated, the horse-shaped home maintains its original architectural integrity.

SANAA's Grace Farms “River” building wins latest MCHAP

2016-10-19T23:00:00-04:00

The verdict is out! SANAA's meandering Grace Farms “River” project has won the second Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, as announced by IIT College of Architecture Dean Wiel Arets and MCHAP Director Dirk Denison during a ceremony tonight at the S.R. Crown Hall in Chicago. First awarded in 2014, the biennial MCHAP is IIT's way of illuminating the most distinguished architectural projects built in the Americas. Projects for the second edition had to be completed between January 2014 and December 2015.

As part of their prize package, SANAA founders Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa will be appointed as MCHAP Chair at IIT Architecture Chicago for the following academic year and will receive up to $50,000 to fund research and a collaborative publication with the school.

SANAA won over an international group of finalists that included Michael Maltzan, Grafton Architects, and Patkau Architects + Kearns Mancini Architects, to name a few (projects pictured in photo gallery below).

The River has co...

Watch SANAA's "River" project come to life in this time-lapse

2016-02-03T13:21:00-05:00

SANAA's "River" community center emerges from the grounds of the New Canaan-based Grace Farms in less than a minute and a half in this time-lapse video by Work Cam Zone. The video captures the meandering structure transforming along with its open landscape, starting from September 2013 to October 2015, when it opened to the public with a slew of festive events.

Take a gander at the video right below.

SANAA's meandering "River" community center opens to the public

2015-10-09T15:15:00-04:00

Within the green open spaces of Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut stands the new arts and community center, the River, which finally opened its doors to the public today. The Grace Farms Foundation selected SANAA to design the building in 2010, not long before Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa won the Pritzker Prize that year. SANAA first revealed their design in 2012.

The new 83,000-square foot structure consists of transparent-walled multi-functional volumes and covered walkways that wind down the park's rolling terrain, hence its River name. Its milky exterior complements the nearby woodlands and meadows at Grace Farms, while the clear glass walls show off the surrounding community gardens, athletic fields, and trails that SANAA designed in collaboration with OLIN. Fifty-five 500-foot-deep geothermal walls heat and cool the building.

The River's scheme boasts a 20,900 sq.ft. indoor amphitheater; a staffed library; a Commons dining and living room that can accommodate up to 300 ...

SANAA's Grace Farms River project to open in fall 2015

2014-11-19T19:31:00-05:00

SANAA's River project in the upcoming Grace Farms in New Canaan, CT will finally celebrate its grand opening next fall. The non-profit Grace Farms Foundation developed Grace Farms as an open public park for the local community, whereas the SANAA-designed building will be used for various community programs and recreation.

After an international search, the Foundation selected SANAA in 2010 to design the structure -- not long before the firm won the 2010 Pritzker Prize. SANAA then revealed their design of the River in 2012.

Reminiscent of SANAA's 2009 Serpentine Pavilion, the River building evidently gets its name from the way it meanders through the park's greenery. The 86,000 sq.ft structure is made of glass, concrete, steel, and wood, and is essentially connected by a single roof that appears to float approximately 10-14 feet above the ground. From an aerial view, the roof's water-like appearance allows the project to blend in with the surrounding landscape, which SANAA designed in ...

Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA lectures at GSAPP

2014-09-22T16:47:00-04:00

This past Wednesday, Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA addressed an overflowing Wood Auditorium, giving the first GSAPP lecture of the semester. Recently appointed dean Amale Andraos gave a brief introduction of Sejima and returned at the end of the lecture to lead a discussion as well as the Q/A portion of the evening.

Sejima began her lecture by explaining her choice of “Canopy” as her theme, an idea that is central to her, both as a part of SANAA and independently. “I like to make a space like a park, because a park is a place where different kind of people can gather,” stated Sejima, describing her desire to create an architecture that allows diverse groups of people to come together to both share and create their own space. By developing the concept of a canopy, Sejima creates a direct connection with the building and the environment, in a similar way that parks connect people with each other and the environment.

Starting with the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland and conc...