Philip Johnson
21 quotes
Biography
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an American architect who designed modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the postmodern 550 Madison Avenue in New York City, designed for AT&T; 190 South La Salle Street in Chicago; IDS Tower in downtown Minneapolis; the Sculpture Garden of New York City's Museum of Modern Art; the postmodern Williams Tower in Houston, Texas; and the Pre-Columbian Pavilion at Dumbarton Oaks.
"Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space."
"At the basis of the Hiterlism mystique is the notion of "race." ... If ... we overlook the terminology that Hitler inherits from Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain—and that has become so repugnant to Americans because it has been made to appear primarily anti-Semitic—we shall find a different picture from what we had been led to expect by reading excerpts from the more lurid German "anthropologists." Reduced to plain terms, Hitler's "racism" is a perfectly simple though far-reaching idea. It is the myth of "we the best," which we find, more or less fully developed, in all vigorous cultures."
"Lack of leadership and direction in the state has let the one group get control who always gain power in a nation's time of weakness—the Jews."
"[T]he German green uniforms made the place look gay and happy. There were not many Jews to be seen. We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring spectacle."
"The painters have every advantage over us today...Besides being able to tear up their failures—we never can seem to grow ivy fast enough—their materials cost them nothing. They have no committees of laymen telling them what to do. They have no deadlines, no budgets. We are all sickeningly familiar with the final cuts to our plans at the last moment. Why not take out the landscaping, the retaining walls, the colonnades? The building would be just as useful and much cheaper. True, an architect leads a hard life—for an artist."
"I like Houston. It's the last great 19th-century city. Houston has a spirit about it that is truly American, an optimism. People there aren't afraid to try something new."
"[It] was the stupidest thing I ever did. I never forgave myself and I never can atone for it. There's nothing you can do."
"[T]he anti-Semitism, I was in on, and that's the part I'm really ashamed of."
"[A]n American fascist who says he represents Father Coughlin's [weekly paper] Social Justice. None of us can stand the fellow and suspect he is spying on us for the Nazis."
"I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?"
"All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space."
"All architects want to live beyond their deaths."
"All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space."
"All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space."
"There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun."
"Architecture is art, nothing else."
"Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were."
"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."
"Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating."
"The future of architecture is culture."
"I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral."