1906-
Architect

Beginnings.

After fifty years spent in and around the profession, Philip Johnson is considered by some to be the dean of American architecture. His career has been varied and controversial, and his designs have always been at the leading edge of his profession. Johnson began his career in the early 1930s as a historian and critic of architecture. As director of architecture at the newly chartered Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Johnson and critic Henry Russell Hitchcock defined what they called "the international style." They predicted that simple, unadorned modern buildings were going to be an international architecture that would reflect a global aesthetic, devoid of local and regional characteristics.

Life as a Modernist.

Throughout the 1930s Johnson continued to advocate modernist architecture through museum shows, teaching, and writing. In 1936 Johnson left his post at the Museum of Modern Art to...