Philip Johnson
Early Life and Education
Philip Johnson was born on July 8, 1906, in Cleveland, Ohio, into a wealthy and prominent family. His father was a successful corporate lawyer, and his mother was a well-educated and cultured woman. He grew up in a privileged environment and received a first-class education.
He attended the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, and then went on to Harvard University, where he studied classics and philosophy. He was a brilliant but restless student, and he took several long trips to Europe during his time at Harvard. It was on these trips that he first encountered the radical new architecture of the European avant-garde. He was particularly impressed by the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.
After graduating from Harvard in 1927, he did not immediately pursue a career. Instead, he used his family’s wealth to travel and to immerse himself in the world of art and architecture. In 1930, he was appointed the first director of the architecture department at the new Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. He was just 24 years old, but he was already a passionate and knowledgeable advocate for the new architecture.
In 1932, Johnson, along with the historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, curated the seminal exhibition “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition” at MoMA. The exhibition and its accompanying catalog introduced the American public to the work of European modernists like Mies, Le Corbusier, and Walter Gropius. The exhibition was a huge success, and it was instrumental in defining and popularizing what would come to be known as the “International Style.”
For the next several years, Johnson was one of the most powerful and influential figures in the world of American architecture, not as an architect, but as a curator, a critic, and a tastemaker. However, his career took a dark and controversial turn in the late 1930s when he became involved in right-wing, populist politics and expressed admiration for the Nazi regime in Germany. He resigned from MoMA in 1936 and spent several years as a journalist and political activist.
After the outbreak of World War II, he abandoned his political activities and, in 1940, at the age of 34, he enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Design to study architecture. He studied under Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, two of the Bauhaus masters he had once championed as a curator. He graduated in 1943 and, after a brief stint in the army, he established his own architectural practice in New York City.
Architectural Philosophy and Career
Philip Johnson’s architectural philosophy was one of constant change and eclectic borrowing. He was not a theorist or an ideologue, but a pragmatist and an aesthete. He is famous for his chameleon-like ability to change styles and for his witty and often cynical pronouncements about the nature of architecture. He famously said, “I am a whore,” and “I have no principles.”
His career can be divided into two main phases. The first, from the 1940s to the 1960s, was his modernist phase, during which he was a devoted follower of his hero, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. His work from this period is a series of elegant and refined exercises in the Miesian style, with a focus on simple geometric forms, precise detailing, and the use of industrial materials like steel and glass.
His most famous work from this period is his own house, the Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Connecticut. The house is a radical statement of minimalist transparency, and it is a clear homage to Mies’s Farnsworth House. However, Johnson’s design is more classical and symmetrical than Mies’s, and its location on a large, park-like estate gives it a more picturesque and romantic quality.
In the 1960s, Johnson began to grow tired of the strictures of modernism. He began to incorporate historical allusions and more decorative and sculptural forms into his work, in a style that has been described as “New Formalism.” His design for the Amon Carter Museum (1961) in Fort Worth, Texas, with its elegant, arched portico, is a key work from this period.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Johnson became one of the leading figures of Postmodernism, a movement that rejected the universalism of the International Style and embraced a more eclectic and historically referential approach to design. His most famous and controversial postmodern work is the AT&T Building (1984) in New York City, a skyscraper with a “Chippendale” broken-pediment top that became a symbol of the new movement.
In his later career, he continued to experiment with different styles, including Deconstructivism, as seen in his design for the “Gate House” at his New Canaan estate.
Johnson’s philosophy was one of aesthetic pleasure and a deep engagement with the history of architecture. He believed that the architect’s primary role was to create beautiful buildings, and he was not afraid to borrow ideas from any source, whether it was the classical past or the latest avant-garde trend. He was a brilliant synthesizer and a master of creating memorable and iconic images.
Notable and Famous Works
Philip Johnson’s long and prolific career produced a wide range of influential and often controversial buildings.
The Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Connecticut, is his most famous work and a landmark of modern architecture. The house is a simple, rectangular glass box with a steel frame, and it is completely transparent. The house is part of a larger, 50-acre estate that includes a number of other structures designed by Johnson over the years, which served as a kind of personal laboratory for his changing architectural ideas.
The Seagram Building (1958) in New York City, for which Johnson designed the interiors and the public plaza in collaboration with Mies van der Rohe, is one of the most important skyscrapers of the 20th century. The building’s elegant, bronze and glass tower and its generous public plaza set a new standard for corporate architecture.
The AT&T Building (now the Sony Tower) (1984) in New York City is the most famous and controversial work of his postmodern period. The 37-story skyscraper is clad in pink granite and is topped with a distinctive, broken-pediment roof that was a playful and provocative reference to historical furniture design. The building was a manifesto of Postmodernism and a deliberate break from the glass and steel boxes of the International Style.
The Crystal Cathedral (1980) in Garden Grove, California, which he designed with his partner John Burgee, is a massive, all-glass church for the televangelist Robert Schuller. The building is a spectacular, star-shaped structure made of over 10,000 panes of glass, and it is one of the most famous examples of late-modern, high-tech architecture.
The PPG Place (1984) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is another of his major postmodern works. It is a complex of six buildings, including a 40-story skyscraper, that are all clad in a shimmering, neo-gothic skin of dark glass.
Awards, Honors, and Legacy
Philip Johnson was one of the most honored and influential figures in American architecture. In 1979, he was the first recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The jury citation acknowledged his “fifty years of imagination and vitality” and his “countless contributions to the art of architecture.” He also received the AIA Gold Medal in 1978.
His legacy is complex and controversial. He was a brilliant architect, a powerful tastemaker, and a shameless self-promoter. He was both a champion of the avant-garde and a corporate architect, a purist and a populist.
His most enduring contribution may be his role as a curator and a critic. Through his work at MoMA, he played a crucial role in shaping the course of American architecture in the 20th century. He was a central figure in the “star system” of architecture, and he was instrumental in launching the careers of many younger architects, including Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.
His own architectural work is a dazzling and often bewildering survey of the changing styles of the 20th century. While some of his buildings have been criticized as superficial or faddish, his best work, such as the Glass House and the Seagram Building, are undeniable masterpieces of modern design.
His controversial political past has also cast a shadow over his legacy, and in recent years, there have been calls to remove his name from the institutions and spaces that he helped to create.
Regardless of the controversies, there is no denying that Philip Johnson was one of the most important and influential figures in the history of modern architecture. He was a man of great intelligence, wit, and charm, and he lived and breathed architecture for over seventy years. He died on January 25, 2005, at the age of 98, in his beloved Glass House.