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John M. Johansen
John MacLane Johansen (June 29, 1916 – October 26, 2012) was an American architect and a member of the Harvard Five. Johansen took an active role in the modern movement.
Johansen was born to two accomplished painters, John Christen Johansen and M. Jean McLane, in New York City in 1916. Growing up in an artful family, Johansen said that his childhood was filled with spaces and enclosures, and his childhood fantasies are present in many of the designs he created during his adult years.
He went to Harvard University and was taught the fundamentals of modern architecture by Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus. While at Harvard, Johansen played for the Harvard Crimson men's soccer team as a striker. There, he earned first-team All-American honors in 1939. In 1939, he graduated the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Masters in Architecture.
After World War II, Harvard graduates were highly sought after, and like many of his colleagues, Johansen was offered a job right on the spot. He proceeded to follow his career path starting out as a draftsman for Marcel Breuer. He then became a researcher for the National Housing Agency in Washington, D.C., and later joined the architect firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York. In 1948, Johansen settled down and established his practice in New Canaan, Connecticut, to accompany four of his other colleagues, Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Landis Gores, and Eliot Noyes. From 1955 to 1960, he was an adjunct professor at Yale School of Architecture, which had become a vigorous center for modernism.
At the time of his death, he was married to Ati Gropius Johansen, a noted art educator and adopted daughter of Walter Gropius and Gropius' second wife, Ilse, whose orphaned niece Ati was. They lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
Johansen's designs stressed function over form, and focused on social, urban, and anthropological conditions, and strived to avoid creating overpowering megastructures. He started exploring the “box,” the single style to accompany the modern movement. Not only was the box economical, it was also easy to build, a stabilizer organizationally and aesthetically coherent. This investigation into such a structure led to the creation of Johansen House #1 in 1950, which was included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibit “Built in the U.S.A.” In 1955, his second box was built, this time a glass box; the McNiff House. In some of his houses, Johansen utilized Palladian elements such as the grotto, the classic cross plan, and the Palladian prototype of the central pavilion linked by low bridges to flanking pavilions. The Palladian prototype is most noticeably present in Villa Ponte, or the Warner House, built in 1957 in New Canaan, Connecticut. In 1969, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1994.
Other notable residences include the Goodyear House (1955), an early example of the Palladian style employed by Johansen; the Bridge House (1957); the Telephone Pole House (1968) made from 104 forty-foot poles that brace the house into the side of a steep ravine; the Labyrinth House (1966) that has no windows but instead glass enclosures between one wall and another; and the Plastic Tent House (1975), made of translucent plastic.[citation needed]
Johansen was also known for his modern commercial buildings. The Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore (1967) was characterized as “a highly sculptural centerpiece among more reserved office buildings.” It was the beginning of a series of buildings that stressed and embraced the functional parts of the buildings, allowing them to emerge while being increasingly identified and emphasized.[citation needed] The facility, unused since 2004 and deemed unsuitable for a theater, saw demolition activities commenced in 2014. It had been considered for landmark status and adaptive reuse, while its owners proposed redeveloping the site with residential and retail development. Celebrated by some and criticized by others for its Brutalist-style architecture, the building was listed on VirtualTourist's 2009 list of the "World's Top Ten Ugliest Buildings".[citation needed] Demolition was proposed in 2012, delayed, and commenced in September 2014.
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John M. Johansen
John MacLane Johansen (June 29, 1916 – October 26, 2012) was an American architect and a member of the Harvard Five. Johansen took an active role in the modern movement.
Johansen was born to two accomplished painters, John Christen Johansen and M. Jean McLane, in New York City in 1916. Growing up in an artful family, Johansen said that his childhood was filled with spaces and enclosures, and his childhood fantasies are present in many of the designs he created during his adult years.
He went to Harvard University and was taught the fundamentals of modern architecture by Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus. While at Harvard, Johansen played for the Harvard Crimson men's soccer team as a striker. There, he earned first-team All-American honors in 1939. In 1939, he graduated the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Masters in Architecture.
After World War II, Harvard graduates were highly sought after, and like many of his colleagues, Johansen was offered a job right on the spot. He proceeded to follow his career path starting out as a draftsman for Marcel Breuer. He then became a researcher for the National Housing Agency in Washington, D.C., and later joined the architect firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York. In 1948, Johansen settled down and established his practice in New Canaan, Connecticut, to accompany four of his other colleagues, Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Landis Gores, and Eliot Noyes. From 1955 to 1960, he was an adjunct professor at Yale School of Architecture, which had become a vigorous center for modernism.
At the time of his death, he was married to Ati Gropius Johansen, a noted art educator and adopted daughter of Walter Gropius and Gropius' second wife, Ilse, whose orphaned niece Ati was. They lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
Johansen's designs stressed function over form, and focused on social, urban, and anthropological conditions, and strived to avoid creating overpowering megastructures. He started exploring the “box,” the single style to accompany the modern movement. Not only was the box economical, it was also easy to build, a stabilizer organizationally and aesthetically coherent. This investigation into such a structure led to the creation of Johansen House #1 in 1950, which was included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibit “Built in the U.S.A.” In 1955, his second box was built, this time a glass box; the McNiff House. In some of his houses, Johansen utilized Palladian elements such as the grotto, the classic cross plan, and the Palladian prototype of the central pavilion linked by low bridges to flanking pavilions. The Palladian prototype is most noticeably present in Villa Ponte, or the Warner House, built in 1957 in New Canaan, Connecticut. In 1969, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1994.
Other notable residences include the Goodyear House (1955), an early example of the Palladian style employed by Johansen; the Bridge House (1957); the Telephone Pole House (1968) made from 104 forty-foot poles that brace the house into the side of a steep ravine; the Labyrinth House (1966) that has no windows but instead glass enclosures between one wall and another; and the Plastic Tent House (1975), made of translucent plastic.[citation needed]
Johansen was also known for his modern commercial buildings. The Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore (1967) was characterized as “a highly sculptural centerpiece among more reserved office buildings.” It was the beginning of a series of buildings that stressed and embraced the functional parts of the buildings, allowing them to emerge while being increasingly identified and emphasized.[citation needed] The facility, unused since 2004 and deemed unsuitable for a theater, saw demolition activities commenced in 2014. It had been considered for landmark status and adaptive reuse, while its owners proposed redeveloping the site with residential and retail development. Celebrated by some and criticized by others for its Brutalist-style architecture, the building was listed on VirtualTourist's 2009 list of the "World's Top Ten Ugliest Buildings".[citation needed] Demolition was proposed in 2012, delayed, and commenced in September 2014.