Philip Johnson (1906–2005) was an American architect and art patron who became one of the most influential and controversial figures in twentieth-century architecture. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he studied philosophy at Harvard before turning to architecture, co-curating the landmark 1932 "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" at the Museum of Modern Art that introduced the International Style to America.
Johnson returned to Harvard to study architecture under Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, completing his degree in 1943. His first major work, the Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Connecticut — a fully transparent steel-and-glass pavilion inspired by Mies van der Rohe — became one of the most celebrated residential designs of the twentieth century and established Johnson as a leading American modernist architect.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Johnson worked closely with Mies van der Rohe, collaborating on the Seagram Building (1958) in New York, widely regarded as the finest International Style skyscraper. He went on to design notable buildings including the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (1964) and numerous museums, libraries, and corporate headquarters.
In the 1980s, Johnson made a dramatic break with modernist orthodoxy, embracing postmodernism with the AT&T Building (1984) in New York, whose Chippendale-inspired broken pediment top became the most recognizable image of postmodern architecture. Johnson was the first recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1979), and his six-decade career — spanning modernism, postmodernism, and deconstructivism — made him one of the most prolific and shape-shifting architects in American history.
