From May 1 to November 30, visitors to the iconic Philip Johnson Glass House in Connecticut will be in for a treat: the house will be wrapped in a shroud of dense fog as a part of Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya’s installation Veil. This installation, which coincides with the 65th anniversary of the Glass House’s construction, is the first site-specific project to engage with the renowned architectural structure.
For 10 to 15 minutes every hour, 600 nozzles will pump out fresh water to produce a thick veil of mist that will envelop the transparent house completely, creating a dramatic environment in which the structure appears to vanish, only to slowly reappear when the fog dissipates. Inside the house, the sense of being outdoors will be temporarily suspended as mist creeps over the glass walls, obscuring the surrounding land from view. The result is a magnificent sight that evokes a sense of mystery and wonder.
Veil engages in an intriguing dialogue with the Glass House. According to Nakaya, a renowned fog artist, “Fog responds constantly to its own surroundings, revealing and concealing the features of the environment. Fog makes visible things become invisible and invisible things–like wind–become visible.” Along a similar vein, the Glass House is fundamentally “[a] dream of transparency, an architecture that vanishes” and reappears with the rise and fall of the fog.
Photos by Richard Barnes / Courtesy of the Glass House
