John M. Johansen
John MacLane Johansen ( born June 29, 1916 in New York City, New York, † 26 October 2012 in Brewster, Massachusetts ) was an American architect and member of the Harvard Five.
Life
Johansen's parents were painters. He attended Harvard University and learned the basics of modern architecture by Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus. In 1939 he left the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Master 's degree in architecture.
After the Second World War he worked as a draftsman for Marcel Breuer, who had emigrated to the United States in 1937 and in 1941 opened his own architectural office. Later Johansen became a researcher for the National Housing Agency in Washington, DC active. Then he worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York.
Finally, he settled in 1948, like his four colleagues Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, Landis Gores and, as a freelance architect in New Canaan (Connecticut) down.
From 1955 to 1960 he was an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Architecture, which was at that time a center of modern architecture in the U.S..
Johansen was the Ati Gropius Johansen art teacher, a daughter of Walter Gropius married. He lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
Style
Johansen's designs emphasized the role over the shape and focused on social, urban and anthropological conditions. He tried to avoid overpowering megastructures. At first he sought to explore the "box" which are inexpensive and easy to build and it was aesthetically coherent. These studies led in 1950 to build the Johansen House # 1, which was included in the exhibition "Built in the USA" at the Museum of Modern Art. 1955 was followed by a glass cube, the McNiff House. In some of his houses used Johansen Palladian elements such as the grotto, the classic cross floor plan and the Palladian prototype of the central pavilion, such as the Villa Ponte or the Warner House.
Some of his later buildings can be attributed to the brutalism as the currently threatened with demolition Mechanic Theater. After its closure the Mummers Theater (now Stage Center ) in Oklahoma City now also demolished at risk.
Work
Buildings and designs ( incomplete)
Writings
- A Life in the Continuum of Modern Architecture, 1995
- Nano Architecture: a new species of architecture Princeton Architectural Press, 2002