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Review
Top Fortuny
fabric cloaks the walls of the Brick House bedroom, where Ibram Lassaw9s Clouds of Magellan hangs
above the frameless Charles H. Beckley double bed.
Bottom In front of the porthole window, a Robert Sonneman noor lamp sits between the two Feltri chairs in the personal
library. Brice Marden etchings, a David Salle watercolor, and a Vija Celmins linocut are displayed on the walls.
9/10 2024
PHOTOS BY MICHAEL BIONDO
30 Texas Architect
perimeter of the Beck House was replicated from
another of Johnson9s works on his Connecticut
property: it is a scaled-up reproduction of Pavilion
in the Pond, located downhill from his Glass House.
The personal library, in blunt contrast to the
regalness of the bedroom, joins purple carpet with
mint green walls and yellow curtains, while a pair
of pink and blue Feltri chairs designed by Gaetano
Pesce match the namboyance of the room. A small
Picasso sculpture and nearly 1,000 pieces of nonarchitectural literature4including some from
Johnson9s well-documented problematic past with
fascism4rest upon the noor-to-ceiling bookshelf
opposite the chairs.
The bathroom is also distinct from the other
two rooms. A thin skylight with vanity bulbs
amongst a vaulted ceiling accentuates a black
and white marble interior with brass finishings;
the design combines elements later employed in
both his ascending all-white Thanks-Giving Square
Chapel in Dallas and the bifurcated petroleumblack Pennzoil Place in Houston. Completed in
consecutive years in the mid-1970s, both the chapel
and the oil company9s former headquarters reveal
not only the diversity of Johnson9s clients, but also
the innuence of light, sturdiness, and spirituality,
as they pertain to function and material selection,
originating from his own property.
4
The Glass House property served as the built laboratory of Johnson9s architectural exploration, which
is renected throughout much of his portfolio, particularly within Texas. A year after the architect
completed the Glass and Brick houses, oil tycoons
John de Menil and his wife, Dominique, also avid art
collectors, commissioned Johnson, who was then still
relatively unknown to Texans, for their private home
in Houston. Like Johnson9s own home, their sleek
modernist 5,600-sf residence garnered local attention, as it deoed the style of adjacent mansions in the
aöuent River Oaks neighborhood. This project was
the orst of Johnson9s 15 other realized works within
the state that included Transco Tower (renamed Williams Tower in 1999) in Houston and the Fort Worth
Water Gardens4the former thanks to a lengthy
relationship with Gerald Hines, who also developed
Pennzoil Place and whose real estate company was
headquartered in Williams Tower since its opening
until mid-2022. Johnson9s relationship with Hines,
as well as many other developers and clients, can
be traced back to the de Menils, who innuenced his
commissions and ultimately his legacy, both within
and beyond the state. The couple was directly or
indirectly responsible for the Amon Carter Museum
of American Art in Fort Worth, the University of
