JOHNSON, PHILIP C.

born July 8, 1906, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. in full Philip Cortelyou Johnson American architect and critic known for both his promotion of the International Style and, later, for his role in defining postmodernist architecture. Johnson majored in philosophy at Harvard University, graduating in 1927. In 1932 he was named director of the Department of Architecture of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. With Henry-Russell Hitchcock he wrote The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (1932), which provided a description of (and also a label for) post-World War I modern architecture. In 1940 Johnson returned to Harvard, where he studied architecture with Marcel Breuer. His real mentor, however, was Mies van der Rohe, with whom he worked on the widely praised Seagram Building, New York City (1958). After World War II Johnson returned to MOMA as director of the architecture department from 1946 to 1954. His influential monograph Mies van der Rohe was published in 1947 (rev. ed., 1953). Johnson's reputation was enlarged by the design of his own Glass House, at New Canaan, Conn. (1949). The house, which is notable for its severely simple, rectilinear structure and its use of large glass panels as walls, owed much to the precise, minimalist aesthetic of Mies but also alluded to the work of 18th- and 19th-century architects. This balance between Miesian influence and historical allusion shifted in the 1950s. Beginning with the Temple Kneses Tifereth Israel, Port Chester, N.Y. (195455), Johnson made fuller use of curvilinear (particularly arch) forms and historical quotation, a pattern continued in the art gallery at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. (196264), and the IDS Center, a multibuilding group in Minneapolis, Minn. (1974). Johnson's style took a final turn with the New York City American Telephone and Telegraph headquarters (1982). Designed with a top resembling a Chippendale cabinet, the building was considered by critics to be a landmark in the history of postmodern architecture. Johnson's partner in these endeavours was the architect John Henry Burgee (b. 1933).