|
February 02, 2005
Philip Johnson, the notable American architect, has died. An influential architect, he was a founder of the US international style of glass towers architecture.
Philip Johnson, The GlassHouse, 1949
Johnson said that, "I am a whore and I am paid very well for high-rise buildings." He recognized that, "The people with money to build today are corporations -- they are our popes and Medicis." Johnson turned away from high modernism to postmodernism. His AT&T Building (1984) in New York City, was designed as the headquarters of what was then the United States' major telecomunications corporation. Its Renaissance allusions and its pediment evoking Chippendale furniture, became a landmark of postmodern design:
Philip Johnson AT&T Building, New York, Photo Dmitrii Zagorodnov
Summer 2000
A celebratory architect, who walked the line between the need for establishment recognition and artistic credibility.
|
As well as the International Style, PJ also gave us the global fashion for architects wearing thick-framed round spectacles. When I was at arch. school there was a rash of students who demanded money from their parents to get new, fashionably unfashionable, International Style eyewear.