Philip Johnson

A "smoothly written and fair-minded" (Wall Street Journal) biography of architect Philip Johnson -- a finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award. When Philip Johnson died in 2005 at the age of 98, he was still one of the most recognizable and influential figures on the American cultural landscape. The first recipient of the Pritzker Prize and MoMA's founding architectural curator, Johnson made his mark as one of America's leading architects with his famous Glass House in New Caanan, CT, and his controversial AT&T Building in NYC, among many others in nearly every city in the country -- but his most natural role was as a consummate power broker and shaper of public opinion. Johnson introduced European modernism -- the sleek, glass-and-steel architecture that now dominates our cities -- to America, and mentored generations of architects, designers, and artists to follow. He defined the era of "starchitecture" with its flamboyant buildings and celebrity designers who esteemed aesthetics and style above all other concerns. But Johnson was also a man of deep paradoxes: he was a Nazi sympathizer, a designer of synagogues, an enfant terrible into his old age, a populist, and a snob. His clients ranged from the Rockefellers to televangelists to Donald Trump. Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A rollercoaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful, and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.

In this critically acclaimed biography, Franz Schulze probes the private and professional life of one of the most famous architects and architectural critics of the twentieth century. The only child of a wealthy Midwestern family, Philip Johnson was a millionaire by the time he graduated from Harvard, and in 1932 he helped stage the historic International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. A patron of the arts and a political activists who flirted with the politics of Hitler, Huey Long, and Father Coughlin, he went on to create controversial and historical structures such as the Glass House, the Roofless Church, the AT & T Building, the Crystal Cathedral, and many more. Johnson's personal charms paired with his manipulative ploys—like his "borrowing" of designs—shine through in this biography. Drawing on Johnson's correspondence, personal photographs, and speeches, and on interviews with his friends and contemporaries, Schulze fills the biography with fascinating information on the architect's family, travels, friends and lovers, and his many buildings and spaces themselves. Franz Schulze is a professor of art at Lake Forest College. He is the author of Fantastic Images: Chicago Art since 1945, One Hundred Years of Chicago Architecture, and Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography.

An illustrated collection of essays analyzing the work and cultural politics of the influential twentieth-century American architect Philip Johnson.

A spectacular visual biography of one of the most celebrated architects and cultural icons of the twentieth century With his elegant suits and trademark round black glasses, Philip Johnson - a witty, wealthy, and well-connected architect - was for many years the most powerful figure in the society and politics of his profession. This impressively illustrated book traces his seven decades of larger-than-life influence, innovation, and controversy in the realm of architecture and beyond. Hundreds of images and documents, many published here for the first time, trace the remarkable life and career of a true legend.

The first authoritative book on the history of the Glass House property—Philip Johnson’s fifty-year project of iconic modernist design, encompassing the remarkable buildings, landscape, and follies. From its completion in 1949 to the present day, Philip Johnson’s Glass House has drawn cognoscenti and the curious from around the world to New Canaan, Connecticut, to experience what might be the most photographed modernist residence in America. The property—an architectural playground on forty-seven acres with eleven Johnsonian follies dating from 1949 to 1995—is an icon of twentieth-century architectural and landscape design. The book chronicles how Philip Johnson and David Whitney, the architect and the plantsman, lived on the property for decades and used the landscape as an ever-changing canvas for their designs—the result of a unique synthesis of influences and ideas from across history and geography. New research reveals Johnson’s and Whitney’s interaction with the landscape and the evolution of the site from a five-acre parcel to a world-renowned gentlemanly estate for modern times. The Philip Johnson Glass House—beautifully illustrated with vintage and commissioned photography—will be a must-have for connoisseurs of architecture, landscape design, photography, and social history.

Until now, however, that house has not been looked at in the context of Johnson's many other house projects. This book, the first to comprehensively survey Johnson's residential work, not only brings to light a largely neglected side of Johnson's achievement, but freshly illuminates his entire career."--BOOK JACKET.

In architectural terms, the twentieth century can be largely summed up with two names: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson. Wright (1867–1959) began it with his romantic prairie style; Johnson (1906–2005) brought down the curtain with his spare postmodernist experiments. Between them, they built some of the most admired and discussed buildings in American history. Differing radically in their views on architecture, Wright and Johnson shared a restless creativity, enormous charisma, and an outspokenness that made each man irresistible to the media. Often publicly at odds, they were the twentieth century's flint and steel; their repeated encounters consistently set off sparks. Yet as acclaimed historian Hugh Howard shows, their rivalry was also a fruitful artistic conversation, one that yielded new directions for both men. It was not despite but rather because of their contentious--and not always admiring--relationship that they were able so powerfully to influence history. In Architecture's Odd Couple, Howard deftly traces the historical threads connecting the two men and offers readers a distinct perspective on the era they so enlivened with their designs. Featuring many of the structures that defined modern space--from Fallingwater to the Guggenheim, from the Glass House to the Seagram Building--this book presents an arresting portrait of modern architecture's odd couple and how they shaped the American landscape by shaping each other.

"In this book, Frank Welch draws on interviews with Johnson, his professional colleagues, and the patrons who commissioned his buildings to discover why Johnson has done his best work in the Lone Star State. He opens with an overview of Johnson's formative years as an architect, leading up to his pivotal meeting with Dominique and John de Menil, who chose him to build their house in Houston in the late 1940s. Welch fully chronicles Johnson's long association with the de Menils and other wealthy Texans and the many commissions this produced, including the University of St. Thomas and Pennzoil Place in Houston, the Kennedy Memorial, Thanks-Giving Square, and the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, the Amon Carter Museum and the Water Garden in Fort Worth, and the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, as well as the numerous skyscrapers Johnson designed for Houston developer Gerald Hines, and several private residences."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved