The Crystal Cathedral, designed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee in 1980 (with adjacent buildings by Richard Neutra and Richard Meier), will continue to serve as a house of worship, having been purchased by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in 2011.

“Oh, I’m mad for religious buildings. The only thing that really gives you a kick in the world is a religious building.” The inimitable Philip Johnson was quoted saying these words in the iconic book on the architect by Hilary Lewis and John O’Connor, Philip Johnson: The Architect in His Own Words.

In September 2011, publisher Rizzoli New York released The Glass House, a photo tour of Philip Johnson’s famous estate. The book includes text by Philip Johnson himself and by architecture critic Paul Goldberger, and is the official Glass House book of The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Robin Hill’s photo “Glass House Dawn” was selected to appear on the book’s cover.

Below is the final piece of a three-part installment wherein Robin Hill shares his experience of photographing the Glass House estate. View Part One and Part Two for the rest of the story.

My journey continues in its roundabout way, and I am now upon a gate, the likes of which I have never seen before. It is most unusual. I try to find a historic connection to its design but find none. What I do find is a beautifully scaled, welcoming structure that entices one to enter. It is everything that an entrance way to a gated community is not. Even when the barrier is down, it feels open. The Pillars rise high on both sides and are painted a welcoming tone of brown, quite different from the brown that smothers the library. Slung low across the bottom quarter is a brushed aluminum tube that splices the composition perfectly, both in terms of its height and its color. The gate is also quite a trick of visual play, as it actually consists of four pillars, not two as it appears from the full frontal view. The pillars on either side stand back to back with their identical twins behind them. This is a very clever way of hiding the mechanism that lifts and lowers the gate. The wires are hidden from the front view and delicately balance the gate between the two pillars. The engineering is sublime and gives a gentle equipoise to the whole structure. There are not enough Os in the word "smooth" to describe this gate.

In September 2011, publisher Rizzoli New York released The Glass House, a photo tour of Philip Johnson’s famous estate. The book includes text by Philip Johnson himself and by architecture critic Paul Goldberger and is the official Glass House book of The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Robin Hill’s photo “Glass House Dawn” was selected to appear on the book’s cover.

Below is the second of a three-part installment wherein Robin Hill shares his experience of photographing the Glass House estate. Read part one here.

Now I am making my way the few steps toward the lakeside pavilion. Here Johnson is up to new tricks. As I approach the lakeside, I am reminded of the London Underground loudspeaker system, which brusquely ejaculates "MIND THE GAP" every time you board or deboard a train. Instead of designing the pavilion to gently nudge the shoreline, there's this intentional but irritating gap that Johnson has deliberately placed in one's way. Why? My first thought is "to mess with your head" or perhaps it is to make you pay attention. OK, so now I'm paying attention, and the impression is that ordinary scale has been obliterated by the architect's hands. This is a perfect modern folly. It is barely functional, save to sit underneath and have an uncomfortable picnic. Through these photographer's eyes excellent framing opportunities are created by the multiple archways. The visual pun is too obvious for my taste, however, and the pavilion does nothing for me in an architectural sense. I begin to feel that this is a dud, a Johnson experiment that doesn't really work very well in either form or function. Perhaps, this is indicative of Johnson's uneven career as an architect, brilliant one minute and mediocre the next. In the space of a few steps I have gone from momentous elevation to ungarnished mediocrity, from design excellence to controlled vacuousness. Still, the adventure of being here leaves my intellect alone for a while and I am left in solitude in the middle of a 46-acre design campus. Heaven! There is a serenity here that is both palpable and meaningful.

In September 2011, publisher Rizzoli New York released The Glass House, a photo tour of Philip Johnson’s famous estate. The book includes text by Philip Johnson himself and by architecture critic Paul Goldberger and is the official Glass House book of The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Robin Hill’s photo “Glass House Dawn” was selected to appear on the book’s cover.

Below is the first of a three-part installment wherein Robin Hill shares his experience of photographing the Glass House estate.

A handful of iconic houses have reached the public imagination, and the Glass House is among the finest. In this transparent pavilion, surrounded by nature, Philip Johnson designed an architectural gem of quiet depth and epic simplicity. Its power arises from the Earth and exerts itself into a natural auditorium that can suffuse the visitor with a sense of grateful contemplation. It is a chapel in a cathedral of nature. One could be tempted into thinking that the Glass House is just a brown rectangular box with see-through walls, but to follow this line of thinking is to miss the point, because its simplicity hides a raw architectural sophistication that transcends an ordinary interpretation of space, providing the visitor with a unique opportunity to experience nature and architecture as a continuous whole.

The Bacardi Building provides a striking example of Miami Modern (MiMo) hybridized with the International Style in Miami, Florida.

Some combinations are just irresistible: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Lennon and McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel, Bacardi and Coke. That such a relationship exists between two buildings may seem to be a little of a metaphorical stretch – that is, until you encounter the two superbly crafted buildings that make up the Bacardi building complex here in Miami. One building stands tall and proud, the other spans wide and colorful. If the Bacardi buildings were a song, they might be that famous Lennon and McCartney recording, "A Day in the Life" from the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Lennon's more caustic lyrics rise in tone, defining the plaza of their music, and McCartney's optimistic retort playfully provides a backdrop. Bacardi's tower, designed by Enrique Guitierrez in 1964, rises cool and architecturally fecund from its concrete roots, and Bacardi's cube, designed by Ignacio Carrera-Justiz in 1973, dances atop a hopeful plinth behind the scenes. It’s a very graceful juxtaposition. To extend the metaphor, it is like the juxtaposition afforded by Lennon and McCartney in "A Day in the Life," in which the contrast is emphasized by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing backward. In the Bacardi complex, the work of Guitierrez and Carrera-Justiz is divided by Bacardi's corporate logo, the Bat. Stroll through the plaza and find yourself transported into a world of modernist sophistication, spatial clarity, and a cool urban rhythm that Vitruvius would have delighted in.

The Florida Southern College campus offers the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings on a single site. The 10 interconnected structures offer an unparalleled view of how Wright intended buildings to be part of a larger, organic whole.

"Out of the ground, and into the light, a Child of the Sun": Wright’s simple but powerful statement describing Florida Southern College offers us a glimpse into the mind of America’s most influential, iconic, and (yes) poetic architect. It also informs us of the organic nature of his architectural thought and practice and is a signpost of his philosophy. Simultaneously, it gives us something of a prophecy regarding the possibilities of biophilic design. Wright championed his own philosophy of organic architecture and, while not 100% compatible with today’s ideas of biophilic design, it certainly laid a strong foundation of intellectual and philosophical support for the movement. Wright’s statement also conjures up images of the profound relationship his buildings displayed with regard to Nature (that’s Nature with a capital N, as he was fond of saying). It is worth noting here that his words could have easily come from one of his creative heroes, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, or Walt Whitman, all of whom had a galvanizing effect on Wright’s thinking and his philosophy of how nature and architecture can be part of an organic whole.

Cutler Bay, South Miami. The brand-new South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center rises out of the flat Florida landscape in a dynamic crescendo of geometric forms that pierce the sky. Its presence offers a penetrating counterpoint to the dull and monotonous Southland Mall and parking lot it faces. Designed by Arquitectonica, the famed Miami-based architectural firm led by Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia, the Cultural Arts Center delights in movement and flow, circulation and performance, geometry and color.