Philip Johnson

American architect, described as the greatest living architect in the world. Considering his list of architectural achievements – corporate skyscrapers, performing arts centers, houses, cathedrals, malls, museums, university buildings and gardens – he is certainly one of the Twentieth Century’s most influential, famous and celebrated exemplars of his field.

Before becoming one of architecture’s most potent forces, Johnson was a client, critic, author, historian, and museum director. He majored in philosophy at Harvard, 1927 where he earned his A.B. in architectural history in 1930. Upon graduation he became the first director of the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Dept of Architecture, 1932-34, returning to that post again in 1946-54. In between, Johnson became the co-founder of what he coined the "international style." Ushering in a new generation of glass towers, the post-war architects of this school followed a philosophy that people felt more secure behind glass walls and thus more connected with their environment.

He had returned to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1940, receiving a B. Arch in 1943 and practicing in Cambridge, MA, until 1946. While back at MoMA, he designed a residence for himself in Connecticut in 1949 for his Masters degree thesis. This is his famous Glass House, a see-through frame structure that was the first of its type in America. He still lives in this home, one that has became a blueprint for Modern architecture. However, he would eventually become critical of the movement he pioneered – dubbing so-called Modern architecture and exemplified by his own home, as "too old and icy and flat."

With his mentor, Mies Van Der Rohe, he worked on New York’s Seagram Building, 1958, that has been called America’s finest high-rise building. He worked with Richard Foster from 1964 to 1967, and then with John Burgee.