philip johnson

Philip Johnson at age 95 with his model of a 30' by 60' sculpture created for a collector in the Middle East Born July 8, 1906(1906-07-08)

Died January 25, 2005 (aged 98)

Nationality American Field Architecture

Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906– January 25, 2005) was an influential American architect. With his thick, round-framed glasses, Johnson was the most recognizable figure in American architecture for decades.

In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA and later (1978), as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 1979. He was a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. When Johnson died in January 2005, he was survived by his long-time life partner, David Whitney, who died only a few months later, on June 12, 2005. Contents [hide] 1 Early life 1.1 The Glass House 1.2 The Seagram Building 2 Later buildings 3 Notable Works 4 References 5 References/Further reading 6 External links //

Early life Chapel of St. Basil on the Academic Mall at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.

Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He was descended from the Jansen (a.k.a. Johnson) family of New Amsterdam, and included among his ancestors the Huguenot Jacques Cortelyou, who laid out the first town plan of New Amsterdam for Peter Stuyvesant. He attended the Hackley School, in Tarrytown, New York, and then studied at Harvard as an undergraduate, where he focused on history and philosophy, particularly the work of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. Johnson interrupted his education with several extended trips to Europe.[1] These trips became the pivotal moment of his education; he visited Chartres, the Parthenon, and many other ancient monuments, becoming increasingly fascinated with architecture.

In 1928 Johnson met the Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was at the time designing the German Pavilion for the Barcelona exhibition of 1929. The meeting was a revelation for Johnson and formed the basis for a lifelong relationship of both collaboration and competition.

Johnson returned from Germany as a proselytizer for the new architecture. Touring Europe more comprehensively with his friends Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Henry-Russell Hitchcock to examine firsthand recent trends in architecture, the three assembled their discoveries as the landmark show "The International Style: Architecture Since 1922" at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1932. The show was profoundly influential and is seen as the introduction of modern architecture to the American public. It introduced such pivotal architects as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. The exhibition was also notable for a controversy: architect Frank Lloyd Wright withdrew his entries in pique that he was not more prominently featured.

As critic Peter Blake has stated, the importance