Hasta La Ideas

Maira Kalman, “The Glass House,” 2004-05

When he wasn’t trading punches with Mies van der Rohe, collecting prizes, and redefining the urban landscape, uberarchitect Philip Johnson (1906-2005) was stockpiling Windex and living it up in the Glass House, his private residence in New Canaan, Connecticut. In 2007, the 47-acre property opened to the public as a stewardship site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a magnet for the design crowd. Now the Glass House is expanding its virtual real estate with glasshouseconversations.org, a website that extends the Glass House Conversations program, a series of invitation-only dialogues held at the property in 2008 and 2009. The goal of the new site, developed by students in the MFA Interaction Design program at New York’s School of Visual Arts in partnership with the Glass House, is to reach an international audience of people with design-related interests (that’s you!) and provide them with an ongoing forum and new community for insightful conversations. Each week, a host will put forth a provocation in the form of a question or a debate topic, and members of the public have up to five days to respond. First up is design critic Alice Rawsthorn, who provokes thusly: “What do you consider to be the most important challenge for designers to tackle today?” Go forth and converse!

Previously on UnBeige: