“HOUSE OF GLASS – On Constructing and Deconstructing”
A performative portrait of the American architect Philip Johnson

Thursday, September 3rd, 2026, 8 p.m.
Schinkel Pavillon, Oberwallstraße 32, 10117 Berlin

Concept: Markus Draper
Script: Markus Draper / Holger Kuhla
Voices: Pia Dembinski / Stella Voge
Music: Sascha Brosamer / Graham Dunning
Dramaturgy: Holger Kuhla
Sound Engineer: Isa Ferri

“HOUSE OF GLASS“ is a performative reading for two voices, music and image. Taking the biography of American architect Philip Johnson (1906–2005), a key figure of the “American Century”, as its point of departure, the work explores the complex entanglements of architecture, power, ideology and memory.

“HOUSE OF GLASS“ unfolds along two essayistic lines of inquiry. The first leads to Nicolas Poussin’s The Funeral of Phocion (1648), the only painting Philip Johnson kept permanently on display in his Glass House. The performance reads the painting as a kind of psychoanalytic mirror of an architect whose life was marked by contradiction, repression and self-mythologisation. The second line shifts the focus from Connecticut to Berlin and Potsdam — two cities to which Johnson repeatedly referred as formative points of reference for his architectural thinking. Viewed through this lens, his biography is reconsidered, while opening up a broader question: how are contemporary societies dealing with the architectural legacies of political power and authoritarian regimes?

Structured as a collage, the performance brings different positions, historical moments and lines of thought into constellation. In his “Dahlem Lectures” of the late 1970s, for instance, Berlin-based scholar of religion Klaus Heinrich offers incisive reflections on the relationship between architecture and power. He examines the tension between the architecture of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the monumental buildings of National Socialism designed by Albert Speer. Heinrich introduces the concept of the “Zurrichtungsmechanismus” — a mechanism of conditioning and regimentation — to describe how architectural spaces can simultaneously fascinate and prepare the “masses” for war. Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, meanwhile, turns to questions of power and its collapse in his 1991 essay “Dan Graham’s Kammerspiel”, embodied in the image of the glass house at night. Tracing the cultural history and effects of glass façades, Wall ultimately describes Philip Johnson’s Glass House as a “vampire trap”.

The premiere of “HOUSE OF GLASS“ will take place at Schinkel Pavillon — a site where different layers of Berlin’s architectural history intersect. The building, a work of East German modernism, incorporates original fragments of Schinkel’s Bauakademie — in the immediate vicinity of the Friedrichswerder Church. In this way, the venue itself enters into resonance with the work, pointing to Schinkel as a key reference in Philip Johnson’s architectural thinking.

Rather than offering a conventional biographical portrait, “HOUSE OF GLASS“ creates a polyphonic approach to one of the most dazzling and controversial figures in twentieth-century architectural history.

Performance in German/English, fully subtitled.

Funded by the Checkpoint Charlie Foundation and Karin Hänel / Bernd Bilitewski.

TICKETS via Resident Advisor: https://de.ra.co/events/2495409