Philip Johnson

Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 (Cleveland, Ohio) – January 25, 2005 (New Canaan, Connecticut)) was an influential American architect. The first director of the architecture department at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) in 1946, and later a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1978 and the first Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979.

Quotes

"Architecture is the art of how to waste space."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"The job of the architect today is to create beautiful buildings. That's all."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Johnson wrote (Heyer, 1966):

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:The painters have every advantage over us today...Besides being able to tear up their failures—we never can seem to grow ivy fast enough—their materials cost them nothing. They have no committees of laymen telling them what to do. They have no deadlines, no budgets. We are all sickeningly familiar with the final cuts to our plans at the last moment. Why not take out the landscaping, the retaining walls, the colonnades? The building would be just as useful and much cheaper. True, an architect leads a hard life—for an artist.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:...Comfort is not a function of beauty... purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful...sooner or later we will fit our buildings so that they can be used...where form comes from I don't know, but it has nothing at all to do with the functional or sociological aspects of our architecture.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~