Raccolta

Johnson designed many landmarks across the nation, including the twin trapezoid-shaped Pennzoil Place in Houston, the 51-story IDS Center in Minneapolis and the New YorkState Theater at Lincoln Center.

In 1967, Philip Johnson formed a partnership with John Burgee. Mr. Johnson entered a new phase of his career with Mr. Burgee, anarchitect with a reputation for mastering large and complex projects. Together, Messrs. Johnson and Burgee attracted the types of commissions -- important high-profile projects,both large-scale and small -- that neither, individually, had previously attracted on a regular basis. These jointly designed projects -- from Minneapolis' IDS Center, tothe Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, to the corporate headquarters of Pittsburgh Plate Glass -- reflect a distinctive, if not easily categorized, approach todesign.


Johnson and Burgee's design for the AT&T Corporate Headquarters building (1984) in New York, with its stone cladding and identifying broken-pediment top,changed the dialogue of contemporary architecture just as dramatically as the International Style had 50 years before. Its blatant use of a material that did not reflect thefunctional or structural realities of the building, as well as the incorporation of design elements merely for their own aesthetic value, ran counter to the tenets of theInternational Style. AT&T represented a critical watershed: it was the first major built structure that revived the use of historic styles -- an approach to design prevalentthroughout history but strongly abandoned and derided by the profession during the supremacy of the International Style.

Mr. Johnson was justly celebrated for championing