Designer of the Month: Philip Johnson

Week 3: architecture

Last week, I looked at Philip Johnson the curator. This week, I want to take a look at Philip Johnson the architect. As The New York Times explained of Johnson in his 2005 obituary, "Often considered the dean of American architects, Mr. Johnson was known less for his individual buildings than for the sheer force of his presence on the architectural scene, which he served as a combination godfather, gadfly, scholar, patron, critic, curator and cheerleader."[1] Both Johnson's work as a curator and architect are, of course, very much related to each other, but Johnson was the Director of the department of Architecture and Design before actually going back to school - to the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1940 to study under Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius - at the age of 34, in order to formally study architecture.[2] At MoMA, Johnson had organized exhibitions such as Machine Art and Modern Architecture, which showcased the work of many of the architects of the new International Style (also known as Modernism. Art Nouveau was considered "modern" architecture at the time, and it was the International Style which went on to become what we call Modernism today), such as J.J.P. Oud, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, whom Johnson had gone to see in Europe before coming to work at the museum.[3] At Harvard, he went to study architecture with two of the very notable modern architects whom he already admired and whose work he'd showcased as a curator.[4] Johnson may not have had the academic experience of some of his fellow classmates, but he had co-authored the book The International Style, which was already a text in a history of architecture course from which he was, very reasonably, excused.[5]

Philip Johnson in his New York office in 1957. Courtesy of The New York Times.

Philip Johnson graduated from Harvard with his Bachelor of Architecture in 1943, and after a stint in the army, he went back to New York to start a one-man practice and once more head the Architecture and Design department at MoMA.[6] However, he had a hard time getting architecture work, although this might have had something to do with the fact that he failed his licencing exam, which he continued to take and fail until he was finally forced to move his practice out of New York and to New Canaan, Connecticut.[7] Not that being unlicensed mattered to Johnson, or to any of his clients. Most of his work was in designing residences, and it was during these early years of his architecture career that Johnson designed one of his most iconic buildings, the Glass House. I'm not going say too much about that today, since it's the topic of next Friday's discussion, but Johnson's early architecture was all about the use of lots and lots of glass - working on designs in a similar style to the one Modern architect that Johnson most admired, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - not only for his own residence, with the design of the Glass House, but also for another building that has since become a New York landmark, the Seagram Building.[8]

The Seagram Building, New York. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson. Courtesy of about.com.

It's funny to think it, but one of the main reasons Philip Johnson finally quit his Director position at the MoMA (for the second time, in 1954) was partially due to a comment by a long-standing rival.[9] Johnson and Frank Lloyd Wright saw each other's work as the antithesis to their own chosen styles; they simultaneously hated and respected each other, and yet enjoyed a long-standing correspondence that lasted nearly three decades.[10] Sometime in 1953, Wright noted to Johnson, "The reason I hate you is that you carry water on both shoulders. You practice when you feel like it, and the rest of the time you sit in a protected position from which you criticize all of us."[11] Apparently, this was just the sort of kick in the butt that Johnson needed to hunker down, pass off the directorship at the MoMA (to Arthur Drexler) and truly dedicate himself to the pursuit of architecture.[12]

The Seagram Building was unique for its time. Designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1954 (it opened in 1959), Johnson was both a major advocate for the building, helping convince the steering committee to choose Mies as the building's architect, and a collaborator on the design of the building.[13] While Johnson never shied away from taking credit for his role as partner in the creation of the Seagram Building, the design belonged to Mies in the most significant respects: he set the building back 100 feet from Park Avenue to create a plaza, which gave the approach to the building a sense of spaciousness that was unique for the time.[14] Johnson's own contributions to the building were in the design of the two Four Seasons bar-restaurants, along with the elevators, lighting, and a pair of glass canopies that covered the entrances leading up to the building from 52nd and 53rd Streets.[15]

Johnson's AT&T Building in New York. Courtesy of the Academy of Achievement.

In the late 1950's, just after his collaboration with Mies on the Seagram Building, Johnson decided to break with formal Modernism entirely, introducing elements of classical architecture into his buildings and beginning a long quest to find ways of connecting contemporary architecture to historical form.[16] This quest brought Johnson to create very formalist designs during the 1960s, and led to the project that would help make him a superstar within the architecture world: the AT&T Building.[17] The classically detailed pink-granite AT&T Building (now the Sony building) on Madison Avenue, was completed in 1984, and caused a sensation even before it was built.[18] The entrance was conceived as a mammoth 116-foot-high round arch flanked on each side by 3 shorter 60-foot rectangular openings, creating the effect of an arcade, while the crown of the building was made into a gable form, giving it the look of a grandfather clock.[19] Unusual, to say the least. Particularly so considering what the building did to the skyline: the "Miesian slab" was so commonplace by the late 1970s that from a distance, the profiles of American cities looked almost indistinguishable from each other.[20] As Franz Schultze explains in his biography about Johnson, "Thus, in the midst of a jungle of squarish boxes, the AT&T pediment, hardly a complicated form in itself, was enough to reawaken New Yorkers to the uniqueness of the Manhattan architectural silhouette."[21] Not too shabby a feat.

Yes, it's true, Philip Johnson did design many more structures than the Seagram and AT&T buildings, but to relate everything would take up much more time and space than I want to spend here. Next week, however, we're going to go a bit back in time, to 1945, when Johnson decided to design a residence for himself.

[1] Paul Goldberger, "Philip Johnson, Architecture's Restless Intellect, Dies at 98," The New York Times online, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/arts/design/27johnson.html (accessed September 17, 2009).

[2] Franz Schultze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 147-8.

[3] Ibid., 98.

[4] Ibid., 147.

[5] Ibid., 147.

[6] Ibid., 160, 171.

[7] Ibid., 211.

[8] Paul Goldberger, "Philip Johnson, Architecture's Restless Intellect, Dies at 98," The New York Times online, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/arts/design/27johnson.html (accessed September 17, 2009).

[9] Franz Schultze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 221.

[10] Ibid., 221.

[11] Ibid., 225.

[12] Ibid., 225.

[13] Ibid., 246.

[14] Ibid., 246.

[15] Ibid., 247-9.

[16] Paul Goldberger, "Philip Johnson, Architecture's Restless Intellect, Dies at 98," The New York Times online, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/arts/design/27johnson.html (accessed September 17, 2009).

[17] Franz Schultze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 344.

[18] Paul Goldberger, "Philip Johnson, Architecture's Restless Intellect, Dies at 98," The New York Times online, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/arts/design/27johnson.html (accessed September 17, 2009).

[19] Franz Schultze, Philip Johnson: Life and Work, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 347-9.

[20] Ibid., 349.

[21] Ibid., 349.