For more than 50 years, Philip Johnson was one of the most influential figures in American design and architecture. Philip Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1906. He received an A. B. in architectural history from Harvard University in 1930. Before designing his first building at the age of 36, Johnson had been client, critic, author, historian, museum director, but not an architect. After graduation he became the Director of the Department of Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1949, Johnson designed a residence for himself in New Canaan, Connecticut for his master degree thesis, which is known as the famous Glass House.
In 1932 he co-directed the Modern Architecture exhibition at MOMA which introduced European modern architecture to a wide American audience. Building on the MOMA show, Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock codified the principles of modern architecture in the book The International Style: Architecture since 1922. During the 1930s, Johnson used his personal wealth to champion the cause of many modern architects most notably "Ludwig Mies van der Rohe".
In 1940 Johnson returned to Harvard's Graduate School of Design where he trained under Marcel Breuer. He received a Bachelor .Architecture in 1943 and practiced architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts until 1946, when he moved back to New York to serve as Director of Architecture at MOMA. He worked with Richard Foster from 1964 to 1967 and with John Burgee from 1967 until his retirement. He became a trustee of MOMA in 1958, received the AIA Gold Medal in 1978, and received the Pritzker Architecture prize in 1979.
As an architect, Johnson is most widely respected for his work in the early 1950s while still under the influence of "Mies Van Der Rohe". Some of his famous projects are International Place in Boston; Tycon Towers in Vienna, Virginia; Momentum Place in Dallas; 53rd at Third in New York; NCNB Center in Houston; PPG in Pittsburgh; 101 California in San Francisco; United Bank Center Tower in Denver; to the far flung National Center for Performing Arts in Bombay, India; Century Center in South Bend, Indiana; a Water Garden in Fort Worth, Texas; a Civic Center in Peoria, Illinois; the Crystal Cathedral in California; and a Dade County Cultural Center in Miami.
Philip Johnson gave us enormous amount of Architectural beauty by his work. The work in the Philip Johnson Sculpture Garden in The Museum of Modern Art has been a source of inspiration, beauty and encouragment to our generation. These sculptures are very diligent and gorgeous by its structure and shape.
Philip Johnson Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art