Designwire Daily: from the editors of Interior Design magazine

Philip Johnson & Mies van der Rohe: On Stage and For Auction

by Annie Block | Friday, June 18, 2010

The Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House; image courtesy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Recently, I had an infusion of mid-century modernism. The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) invited me to a party, fittingly held at the Four Seasons, announcing and celebrating Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House. The NTHP now owns and manages both sites, and Modern Views is set to raise $1 million for their preservation via two separate auctions in Chicago and NY this fall.

Phillip Johnson's Glass House; image by Eirik Johnson.

The Modern Views party at the Four Seasons; image ©AMBER DE VOS/PatrickMcMullan.com.

What’s in the auction you ask? Only drawings, sculptures, and the like from 100 of the biggest names in design today—David Adjaye, Thom Mayne, Paula Scher, Karim Rashid, and, of course, Mies’s grandson Dirk Denison, to name a few—many of them at the Four Seasons that night.

Paula Scher's auction donation: Modernism USA, 2010, silk screen; image courtesy of the designer.

Robert Stern, Mohsen Mostafavi, Michael Graves, Paul Goldberger, and Kevin Roche at the Four Seasons; image ©AMBER DE VOS/PatrickMcMullan.com.

Another person at the party was Kyle Bergman, who seems to have his hand in all things arts- and design-related. In addition to being an architect, Kyle is also on the board of and a teacher at Yestermorrow, a design/build school in the Dominican Republic; founder and festival director of the Architecture and Design Film Festival coming to New York this fall; and, most recently, producer of “The Glass House,” an Off-Broadway play about Mies and Philip between 1945-1955, when they both built their glass houses.

Harris Yulin as van der Rohe & David Bishins as Johnson in "The Glass House" play; image by Jon Kandel.

The play completed its workshop run during a sold-out show on June 5, which I was lucky enough to attend. It was excellent, delving into Mies and Philip’s mentor/nemesis relationship, Mies’s lady-magnet personal life, and Dr. Edith Farnsworth’s vision for and ultimate heartbreak from her commission to Mies. Written by June Finfer and directed by Evan Bergman (Kyle’s brother), the play plans to run again, possibly in other cities like Chicago. I’ll be sure to post that information once it’s available.

The Farnsworth House is in Plano, Illinois; image courtesy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.