River of dreams
Don”™t get us wrong, Fairfield County is a pretty place with its rambling stone walls and idyllic nooks, if not full of the iconic visuals that dot New England postcards from Bar Harbor, Maine to the covered bridge in West Cornwall.
If we have one undisputed claim to picturesque fame, however, it is the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan ”“ and the town may soon be able to extend its renown.
Literally.
The Japanese architecture firm Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates (SANAA) allowed a peek at its vision for the “River” structure designed for New Canaan”™s Grace Farms Foundation ”“ not a building on a river, but one that mirrors the winding course a river might take as it traverses an acre of meadow, trees and wetland.
Combine Christo”™s famed “Running Fence” with Philip Johnson”™s Glass House, built in 1949, and you get the picture.
Connecticut has its fair share of architectural masterpieces, thanks to the presence of Yale University”™s school of architecture and New Canaan”™s hive of modernist designers a half-century ago. But Chicago we are not ”“ it is doubtful many postcards are being sent out these days adorned with the Knights of Columbus Building in New Haven, the Yale Hockey Rink, High Ridge Park in Stamford or other modernist works that otherwise strike the eyes driving along the streets and highways.
It is SANAA”™s first U.S. project since winning the 2010 Pritzker Prize, and a quick perusal of its portfolio shows how they were chosen by the Grace Farms Foundation ”“ in this country most notably with the Toledo Museum of Art”™s Glass Pavilion, but also with myriad other works including the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Kensington Gardens that perhaps helped inspire the glass River planned for New Canaan.
Glass architecture has long been cemented ”“ or glazed ”“ in the artistic zeitgeist of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Johnson”™s Glass House, to Mies van der Rohe”™s Farnsworth House outside Chicago, to I.M. Pei”™s Glass Pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. In the woods of Spain, an architecture firm built an intriguingly elongated, low-slung, glass-walled office to inspire its own designers with a window to nature.
As Grace Farms readies for its SANAA masterpiece at a cost of up to $60 million, in September, the Glass House launched a new exhibition program with works by Frank Stella and its first sculptor-in-residence Ken Price, rededicating the site as an experimental cultural center under new director Henry Urbach.
“The Glass House continues to exist as a site of cultural production, a place of innovation and discovery,” Urbach said in a written statement. “The Glass House served, for nearly 50 years, as a gathering point without equal; as a laboratory for experimenting with the collection and display of art, architecture, landscape, and people; as a seat of power and a decisive stage for culture that played no small part in determining what mattered to the late 20th century.”
The architectural path through the 21st century, we suspect, will wind along New Canaan”™s glass River. As SANAA put it, in a “statement of intentions” published by the Grace Farms Foundation:
“From one room, one may see the large lake in the distance and from another, one can overlook the wetland which stretches into the landscape below. This singular roof also gives way to a variety of ambience such as a lively room facing a lively courtyard, and a calm space with sunlight trickling through the foliage of the trees.
“With the rich property and natural environment, we hope to make the architecture become part of the landscape without feeling strongly like a building. We hope that visitors will enjoy the beautiful and changing seasons through the spaces and experience created by the facility.”