Philip Johnson, 98, Innovative, influential architect
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Innovative, influential architect Philip Johnson dies at age 98
Associated Press
http://www.kansas.com/
NEW YORK - Philip Johnson, the innovative architect who promoted
the "glass box" skyscraper and then smashed the mold with
daringly nostalgic post-modernist designs, has died. He was 98.
Johnson died Tuesday night in New Canaan, Conn., where he lived,
according to Joel S. Ehrenkranz, his lawyer. John Elderfield, a
curator at the Museum of Modern Art, also confirmed the death
Wednesday.
Johnson's work ranged from the severe modernism of his own home
to the Chippendale-topped AT&T Building in New York City, now
owned by Sony, and the IDS Center in Minneapolis.
He and his partner, John Burgee, designed the Crystal Cathedral
in Garden Grove, Calif., an ecclesiastical greenhouse that is
wider and higher than Notre Dame in Paris; the RepublicBank in
Houston, a 56-story tower of pink granite stepped back in a
series of Dutch gable roofs; and the Cleveland Playhouse, a
complex with the feel of an 11th century town.
"Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of
organizing interior space," Johnson said in a 1965 interview.
He expressed a loathing for buildings that are "slide-rule boxes
for maximum return of rent," and once said his great ambition was
"to build the greatest room in the world - a great theater or
cathedral or monument. Nobody's given me the job."
In 1980, he completed his great room, the Crystal Cathedral. If
architects are remembered for their one-room buildings, Johnson
said, "This may be it for me."
He got even more attention with the AT&T Building in New York
City, breaking decisively with the glass towers that crowded
Manhattan. He created a granite-walled tower with an enormous
90-foot arched entryway and a fanciful top that seemed more
appropriate for a piece of furniture.
The building generated controversy, but it marked a sharp turn in
architectural taste away from the severity of modernism. Other
architects felt emboldened to experiment with styles, and
commissions poured into the offices of Johnson-Burgee.
Most were corporate palaces: the Transco II and RepublicBank
towers in Houston; a 23-story, neo-Victorian office building in
San Francisco, graced with three human figures at the summit; a
mock-gothic glass tower for PPG Industries in Pittsburgh.
"The people with money to build today are corporations - they are
our popes and Medicis," Johnson said. "The sense of pride is why
they build."
His large projects at times ran into a buzz saw of criticism from
local preservationists and even fellow architects. In 1987, he
was replaced as designer of the second phase of the New England
Life Insurance Co. headquarters in Boston after residents
complained about the project's size and style.
Critics unearthed a quotation he had made at a conference a
couple of years earlier: that "I am a whore and I am paid very
well for high-rise buildings." Johnson said later his choice of
words was unfortunate and he only meant that architects need to
be able to compromise with developers if they want to see them built.
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was born July 8, 1906, in Cleveland, the
only son of Homer H. Johnson, a well-to-do attorney, and his
wife, Louise. After graduating with honors from Harvard in 1927
with a degree in philosophy, he toured Europe and became
interested in new styles of architecture.
That interest became his life's work in 1932, when Johnson was
appointed chairman of the department of architecture of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York. That same year, he mounted an
influential exhibition, "The International Style: Architecture
1922-1932."
Johnson was especially enthusiastic about the work of the German
architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who called for designs that
express a building's structure in the most direct and economical
way possible. Under such a doctrine, if a building is supported
by steel columns, they should be left visible instead of being
masked behind stone or brick.
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