Glass House Presents: The Structure of Light: Richard Kelly’s Collaborations with Philip Johnson and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

On the occasion of the re-issue of the iconic floor lamp that Richard Kelly and Philip Johnson designed in 1953 for The Glass House by the New Canaan-based firm of BassamFellows, architectural historian Dietrich Neumann will explore Richard Kelly’s design philosophy and his collaborations with Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe at the Glass House, the Lake Shore Drive Apartments, and the Seagram Building.

Dietrich Neumann is the Christopher Chan and Michelle Ma Professor for the History of Modern Architecture and Urban Studies at Brown University. He was trained as an architect in Munich, Germany and at the Architectural Association in London and received his PhD from the Technical University of Munich. His publications have dealt with the history of skyscrapers, movie set design, architectural illumination (in particular the work of Richard Kelly) and the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He has won fellowships and residencies at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montréal, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, at the American Academies in Berlin and Rome and won the Founder’s (1996) and Philip Johnson Awards (2003) from the Society of Architectural Historians, where he served as president 2008-2010 and was named a fellow in 2018. He has held Visiting Professorships at the Yale School of Architecture, the University of Porto and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a member of the Committee on Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art and currently serves as president of Docomomo NE.

Photo: Michael Biondo