Talk:Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson was one of the most influential 20th-century architects. Johnson constantly pushed the mold with new modernist styles for America.

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 * Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
 * Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
 * The people with money to build today are corporations -- they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.
 * I am a whore and I am paid very well for high-rise buildings.
 * I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs — at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.
 * I believe in juxtaposition of the arts.
 * Philip Johnson on Frank Lloyd Wright - He's the greatest architect of the nineteenth century.
 * The Michelangelos of this world are not to be imitated; it is too difficult, and too dangerous.
 * The duty of the artist is to strain against the bonds of the existing style.


 * The job of the architect today is to create beautiful buildings. That's all.
 * I would rather stay in Chartres Cathedral with the nearest toilet two blocks away, than in a Harvard house with back-to-back bathrooms.


 * Architecture is surely not the design of space, certainly not the massing or organization of volumes. These are ancillary to the main point, which is the organization of procession. Architecture exists in time.


 * On architects being known for long life spans: Of course they live long -- they have a chance to act out all their aggressions.
 * To be in the presence of a great work of architecture is such a satisfaction that you can go hungry for days. To create a feeling such as mine in Chartres Cathedral when I was 13 is the aim of architecture.


 * Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.


 * ...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.