Modern Views: Gary Hilderbrand

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

 ……………………………………………………………. 

Almost Nothing, 2010 / Gary Hilderbrand / Photo collage, 9-3/4" x 11"/ Courtesy of the Designer, photograph courtesy of Sotheby's

Gary Hilderbrand’s Almost Nothing recalls photomontages by Mies, notably for Resor House, 1939. Mies describes the aim of reducing the presence of building to “beinahe nichts” (“almost nothing”). Farnsworth House and the Glass House exploit this motive. Over time, in both, the landscape becomes almost everything.

BIO:

Gary Hilderbrand is a principal of Reed Hilderbrand Associates, in Watertown, Massachusetts, and he has been Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1990. Widely published as an author and critic on landscape architecture practice, his writings include The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism, a monograph on the 1955 Miller Garden project of Eero Saarinen and Daniel Urban Kiley in Columbus, Indiana.

Hilderbrand’s hand-constructed maps, photo-collages, and design work have been exhibited in group shows and solo exhibitions in Rome, New York and at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, Mass MOCA, and Boston University. For more information see:  www.reedhilderbrand.com

Recent projects and publications:

Essay, “Varied Tree Shade for New Urban Pleasures,” in Harvard Design Magazine, No. 31, Fall/Winter 2009/10.  http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/

Essay, “Reciprocities,” in Sturm und Drang: Landscape Architecture in Europe, publication of Colleccion Arquithemas, Barcelona, Spain; 2010.

Recently completed project: East Court at the Dallas Art Museum, a collaboration with the artist Richard Fleischner.  http://www.dm-art.org

Feature in T magazine (New York Times supplement), in April 2010, by Pilar Viladas, on the renewal of Philip Johnson’s 1964 Beck House, in Dallas. Six acres of gardens and sculpture; we are the landscape architects.

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles