Remembering Philip Johnson, the architect who pioneered modernism in America

Philip Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005), the American architect who received the first Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979, was one of the key figures who defined what we know as modern architecture today. An extraordinary repertoire comprising museums, theatres, libraries, houses, gardens and corporate structures were cited by the then Pritzker jury as a ‘combination of the qualities of talent, vision and commitment that has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the environment’.

Before designing his first building at the age of 36, Johnson had been a client, critic, author, historian and museum director, but not an architect.

15 years since the loss this great visionary, STIR remembers his life and his most significant contributions to the world of architecture.

Library of Congress

The Cleveland native and Harvard graduate became MOMA’s (Museum of Modern Art) first director of the architecture department in 1930, where he laid the canon of modernism. In 1932, he curated Modern Architecture: International Exhibition with architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and introduced people to an emerging architectural style that was characterised by simplified geometry and minimalism. The ‘International Style’, as it was popularly known, was described by Johnson as ‘probably the first fundamentally original and widely distributed style since the Gothic.’

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. – Philip Johnson

A significant event in Johnson’s life that inspired his journey in architecture and gave form to many landmark buildings, including the glassy skyscraper of the Seagram Building in New York, was his meeting with architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Over the years, Johnson found a friend and a mentor in Mies. His design of the Glass House (1949) in New Cannan, Connecticut, surrounding green hills and maple woods, draws similarities with Mies’ Farnsworth House from Plano, Illinois. The project, though referred as a house, is best understood as a pavilion for viewing the surrounding landscape. It was in this house that Johnson spent most of his life.

Through an eclectic career, Johnson did not have one recognisable style. His approach to architecture, which has often been deemed as an ‘anomaly’, was about appreciation and ability to design, in diverse aesthetics. His projects range from early modern buildings to later post-modern structures such as the Monastery building at  St. Anselm's Abbey in Washington DC (1960), The Kunsthalle Bielefeld art museum in Bielefeld, Germany (1968), The  Williams Tower in Houston, Texas (1983), and 550 Madison Avenue (formerly AT&T building and Sony Building) in Manhattan, New York (1984).

Johnson, who lived till the age of 98, was cited by architectural critic Paul Goldberg in an obituary in The New York Times (2005) as a ‘combination godfather, gadfly, scholar, patron, critic, curator, and cheerleader.’ As the original starchitect of America, who gave the country many beloved buildings that still shine in their glassy glory, his life continues to inspire with a message of deep commitment and legacy - one that not only existed till he was alive but which is continuing and everlasting.