Philip Johnson, who reigned for much of the 20th century as architecture's leading taste maker and designed some of America's most recognizable buildings, including the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, has died. He was 98.
Johnson died Tuesday night at the Glass House, his masterpiece of unadulterated International Style Modernism in New Canaan, Conn., said Terence Riley, chief curator for architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The cause of death was not announced.
With his trademark oversize black-frame glasses, crisp dark suits and ready store of witty, trenchant commentary, Johnson was not only the long-standing dean of American architects, but someone who enjoyed broad celebrity beyond the profession.
Known more for his remarkable ability to anticipate trends and paradigm shifts rather than for the consistency of his work, Johnson played a significant role in nearly every major architectural movement of the last century.
He did so not just as an architect but as a tireless advocate of architecture as art. Among his best known works are the quintessentially cosmopolitan Four Seasons restaurant inside architect Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York and a group of skyscrapers for corporate clients, including the 1984 AT&T Building in Manhattan, topped with a pediment designed to resemble the top of a Chippendale chest of drawers. That building remains one of the most recognizable of postmodernist skyscrapers.
After helping to usher in the age of architectural celebrity and fashion, he was only too happy to sit atop the ladder of fame, reaching down to help up those architects he deemed most worthy, including figures with styles as different as those of Robert A.M. Stern, Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas.
"In his life, he popularized architecture," Gehry said Wednesday. "He made [the cover of] Time magazine with the AT&T Building. He loved architecture and he promoted a number of people. He mentored people way beyond what anybody else did."
Johnson, who was the first winner of the Pritzker Prize, an award established in 1979 to honor an architect of international stature, rose to prominence in the early 1930s as the first director of MoMA's architecture department. In that post, he actively championed the International Style Modernism that was emerging in Europe, familiarizing Americans with its clean lines and expanses of glass and bringing it into the American mainstream.
