People in Glass Houses

One thing I’m quite sure about is modernist architecture. Love it. A lot. Not sure I’d want to live in it, but then I’ve never had the opportunity. Still, as aesthetic objects go, nothing beats a good Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe. In fact, if you asked me for my list of the most beautiful things in the world, Fallingwater and Mies’s pavilion in Barcelona would be right up there (you can’t quite tell how fabulous the pavilion is from the pictures, and while Fallingwater does look good in pictures, it’s unimaginably better in person).

So I am genuinely sad about the death of Philip Johnson. When I was a kid, I loved house plans, and I would spend hours leafing through books of them (my dad was trained as an architect, hence the ready availability of books of house plans). One of my favorites was a book of modernist classics, if that oxymoron can be permitted, and the Glass House is still imprinted on my brain. It’s just a perfect building. Indeed, it’s so perfect I can even forgive him the AT&T building.

And yet, though I’m sad to hear the news of his death, there’s something right about dying at the age of 98, in your masterpiece, after such a life, such a career, with your partner of 45 years by your side. I feel like the news and my life are too full of senseless, violent, early, unwarranted deaths--from bombs, guns, tsunamis, car crashes, cancer. It’s kind of comforting to think, for once, “oh, that’s sad, but it’s ok.”