Philip Johnson

1972 copy of Philip Johnson by Charles Noble

The career of Philip Johnson as a practicing architect began only in his thirties, after he had already established himself as a critic and historian. His enthusiasm for the architecture of the modern movement was confirmed by a visit to Europe in 1928, during which the young Harvard graduate met Mies van der Rohe, who was to become the most influential figure in his career. The architecture of Johnson is thus inextricably bound up with that of his mentor and friend.

Johnson's first building (1942), a house for himself in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shows the influence of Marcel Breuer, under whom he was studying at Harvard, but hints at the later very clear association with the ideas of Mies, notably in his own Glass House at New Canaan, Connecticut (1949). The formal association of the two architects was to come several years later, after Johnson had completed numerous private houses in the early 1950s, with their collabOration on the Seagram Building,
New York. Here Johnson designed the lavishly appointed interior of the Four Seasons restaurant.

From 1960 on, Johnson developed his own individual style in various public buildings, such as the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, with a monumentality deriving from ancient and modern sources of inspiration and from the use of granite-facing slabs. This trend is also seen in the exterior of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, in Lincoln, Nebraska (1963), with its blank wall panels set between columns, all in travertine marble. The design of public buildings now occupied Johnson's attention increasingly. New York City boasts important examples of his work such as the annex to the Museum of Modern Art and the New York State Theater (part of Lincoln Center). At Yale University the designs of both the Epidemiology and Public Health Building and the Kline Science Center (both 1965) bring a massive vertical emphasis amid the more traditional surroundings.

Hardcover with dust jacket 

Author: Text by Charles Noble, photos by Yukio Futagawa

Edition/year: 1972, Tames and Hudson Ltd. 

Condition: Good vintage condition 

10.5" x 8" x 0.75"