Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1906. He received an B.A. in architectural history from Harvard University in 1930 and upon graduation became the Director of the Department of Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1932 he co-directed the Modern Architecture exhibition at MOMA which introduced European modern architecture to a wide American audience. Building on the MOMA show, Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock codified the principles of modern architecture in the book The International Style: Architecture since 1922 . During the 1930s, Johnson used his personal wealth to champion the cause of many modern architects most notably Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. In 1940 Johnson returned to Harvard's Graduate School of Design where he trained under Marcel Breuer. He received a B.A in 1943 and practiced architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts until 1946, when he moved back to New York to serve as Director of Architecture at MOMA. He worked with Richard Foster from 1964 to 1967 and with John Burgee from 1967 until his retirement. He became a trustee of MOMA in 1958, received the AIA Gold Medal in 1978 and received the Pritzker Architecture prize in 1979.

As an architect, Johnson is most widely respected for his work in the early 1950s while still under the influence of Mies Van Der Rohe. However, he has altered his architectural principles from Modernist to Post-Modernist to anti-Post Modernist at will. This has led to the criticism that he shows more interest in style than in substance. He will probably be remembered more as a stimulator of ideas than as a designer.

Philip Johnson designed the Crystal Court at the IDS Center in Minneapolis in 1973 and
Johnson House, "The Glass House", at New Caanan, Connecticut, 1949.