Johnson, Philip Cortelyou

▪ 2006

 American architect (b. July 8, 1906, Cleveland, Ohio—d. Jan. 25, 2005, New Canaan, Conn.), wielded great influence in American architectural design, playing a defining role in several 20th-century movements, from International Style to Postmodernism to Deconstructivism. Though he graduated (1930) from Harvard University with a degree in philosophy, his abiding interest soon turned to architecture. Johnson was a student of Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius and an apprentice of Mies van der Rohe, assisting the latter with his Seagram Building (1958) in New York City. During several trips to Berlin in the 1930s, Johnson had a brief enthrallment with fascist politics; on later reflection he described his political activity as “unbelievable stupidity.” Before and after World War II, he led the newly founded architecture department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Johnson's early masterwork was built for himself: the austere, boxy Glass House (1949) with glass panel walls, in New Canaan. He drifted away from minimalism, and in the 1970s and '80s he erected high-rise commercial buildings with historical undertones. His later masterwork was the pink granite AT&T headquarters (1984; now Sony Plaza) in New York City, which featured a split-pediment roof resembling a Chippendale cabinet, a major signpost in the arrival of Postmodernism. Other notable works included Pennzoil Place (1976) in Houston and Crystal Cathedral (1980) in Garden Grove, Calif. A public figure who positioned himself at the vanguard of new styles, Johnson was also a critic, curator, and socialite. In 1979 he became the first recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize for lifetime achievement.

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