Swank in The Arts; 158; Philip Johnson

A good evening, I'm Patsy Swank. Last week, Philip Johnson was announced as the first winner of the new $100,000 Pritzker International Architecture Award. When Johnson was in Dallas last year to receive the gold medal from the American Institute of Architects, he and I had a visit. That interview won for this program, the John Flowers Award from the Texas Society of Architects, for the year's best television coverage of architecture. After all these circumstances, we thought you might like to see it again. Johnson came to the practice of architecture later than most. He had already made a reputation as an architectural historian and critic when he decided to go back to school and trade to become a practicing architect. He's a gifted and determined man and his rise in the field was steady. His own home, the famous glass house, has been published all over the world and has been willed to the National Trust. He collaborated with his mentor, Mies van der Rohe, on the Seagram Building in New York, where he's still offices.

He now heads the firm of Johnson and Berguille, whose practice is worldwide. Mr. Johnson does not appear very often on television, but he was kind enough to come here during the convention for a visit. We'd like to share it with you. What's the best battle? The best battle is the next one always, because one we're in now that I suppose is the best next to the beginning. You know, 50 years ago, when the international style wasn't very well known and names like Breuer and Le Corbusier were totally unknown, we battled for the recognition of modern as against the revivalists. This is so long for your day. You don't know what I'm talking about, but I assure you this is what happened in the 20s, and in the 20s, modern architecture sort of came of age very quickly, and so we at the Museum of Modern Art have been pressing for it very hard ever since, and that was a terrible battle. We won it entirely too well. The Dallas is all international stylists, all glass boxes with flat tops on. So now we're off on a different kick, and so we're having the new battle, but in reverse,

and it is more fun. When you say you're off on a new kick, and that interests me, what makes you go off on a kick? That's an interesting thing. I suppose to me, it's a simple matter of change, that a style of architecture, where is it so thin, that the kind of modern that we worked for got boring, the secret building which I was connected with, the Mies van der Rohe building in New York, perhaps was one of the finest, but that's toward the end, that was in 56. This is 20 years later, and we're still building the same glass boxes all over the world, built now of mirror glass, but still just chunks, and many of us get restive, especially the young, and I'm with them, God bless them, you see, and we are therefore all casting about for what is now going to happen to architecture, the so-called modern doesn't satisfy us anymore. So there are many things, a lot of us, like myself, go in for more historical reference.

In New York, for instance, we have a great tradition of McKinney-Midden White, of Raymond Hood, of the 20s, of the 90s, all great periods, and so we're designing for New York, a more less classical-looking skyscraper, and it has everybody up in arms, it's delightful. I'm sending one with that. What is the rationale behind the AT&T? AT&T, I don't know, it has a rationale, I've always been interested in history, I was an historian before I was an architect, and it always seemed very important that architecture should make some sort of connection to the surroundings it was built in. If I were doing a tall office building for Houston, Texas, which I am doing, it would not be a classical building, because there are no classical paradigms in Houston to hook on to, but we believe today that architecture can't exist in a vacuum, that if you build in a town that has the atmosphere that New York has of the 20s, of the skyscrapers that

are topped with cigarettes or pinnacles or spires, that another flat top would just be obnoxious, so we're adding another kind of a top to the New York skyline scene, and then we feel it's almost a duty of these days to pay attention to what other architects have done in the past, rather than always inventing architecture, a flat top and technologically perfect all the time. Well this seems, perhaps it's because of the whole shock situation of the presentation of AT&T, to be rather sudden, and yet I seem to remember that you were talking about Sullivan along about 1932 and that you have said that Henry Richardson is your favorite architect, has this been bubbling along underneath for a long time? For us, for some of us it has, they're historically minded, for others it takes a different direction, we'll have that in the convention when some of the younger designers are going to be there to tell us their roots to change.

In Dallas I think the clearest place to see it is with a new hotel, only a short five or ten years ago it would have been a straight flat top hotel, it might have had the revolving restaurant, all heights have revolving restaurants and big courtyards, but the buildings themselves have always been perfectly straight and flush, look at this, it's a pile of ice, it's a pile of mirror blocks that are asymmetrically piled up in the skyline, which is a welcome relief to me, to the perfectly straight forward functionalist boxes of the past. That's another way of breaking loose from the box, is the way that excellent building shows itself on the horizon, I haven't been in, so I won't comment on the building, but just to look at it as you come to Dallas gives you a feeling that's Dallas, much in Houston one of our buildings, the pins all tower that sort of bows at each other, it looks like Houston now as you approach the skyline, we did that, our firm, and that is the direction you do in cities that we're really born since the war, Dallas and Houston are post-war

cities, and so the best thing to do is to go on in the tradition started already by those two cities, notice I would not try to do a AT&T building in Texas. And yet Texas of all the places that I know is desperately hungry to go back and touch its own roots, the preservation of our senses is strong, they already know. But what would the, in domestic architecture I can see that in houses, you could find them in Galveston, you find little pockets in other cities, but nothing like the amounts you find in the east, and so what, the point is that you'll find your own regionalism if you will, Texas has always been a very proud state, and they might invent a kind of modern architecture more like this, what we're doing in Houston or what Wellton Beckett did in that hotel, a more shaggy interpretation of modern. You have to use that kind of glass, for instance, today because of energy saving, you see

that blocky glassy look, icy look is bound to continue because that's the only kind of glass we can afford that reflects the rays away from the windows, you see. So I don't know what the future of Texas architecture is, all I mean it may be quite different from the future of New York architecture, and Miami, of course I'm doing a city center there now, where our buildings more or less are pseudo-spanish. We don't mind the pseudidness, we don't mind the, the fact that the original Spanish architecture in Miami never looked Spanish, all that is the material. The fact is that people feel at home with those buildings, with tile roofs, and the Karl Stone, which is much like your Austin Stone, has a shell in it, and that's what the libraries and museums should look like in Miami. Well, I'm not sure what museums should look like in Texas. But that's always been true, isn't it? What's that?

I mean, that that's what something should look like somewhere. What changed your mind? What changed your mind to do it now? Well, you see, as you pointed out, it took a long time for me to develop the anti-international style feel, but it now seemed the right moment also, I've got a very conservative client. The telephone company is not a wild blue yonder stock that you gamble with. It's a state corporation, the largest in the world by many times, and so their image is perfectly naturally old New York, to me. This my interpretation, they have been the best clients possible, they don't interfere, and they have been very respectful about the designs, and they like it. But it's not glass, it's all stone, you see, with old-fashioned windows. That open? That open, regular windows, you know, like this. It's extraordinary to see a building with windows again, and I think some of the clients said when they first saw the design, now that looks like a building, it's a curious remark. But only, if you live in New York, it isn't curious, because there's so many buildings of the 20s that are built of stone and brick that look like a building, see? I'm going to go, you use the word invent, as if this were all an intellectual exercise.

Where does it touch people for you? Where does it touch environment? What are those impressions? Well, those are the inputs, you're right, we never invent anything, I don't think an architect, you know, originality is only what you forget to tell people where you got it from. There's really no such thing, and our input is most precious, it's not like painters, I envy painters, they can get off and paint for themselves. And if you don't like it, that's your tough luck, but we in the architecture field have to consider, and want to, consider people, and especially the way they use the building. And we want to encourage them, for instance, if you were doing a concert hall, you want to enjoy a concert better in a good architectural environment than you do in a ugly concert environment. And I thoroughly believe that you do, it's like restaurant, you eat better food, and you enjoy it better, if it's a run pleasant surrounding, same with cities. Cities that have handsome buildings are going to have something beyond paying for.

And unfortunately our material is the way of life we count everything in dollars, but way beyond dollars is architecture, it'd be hard to pay for a short cathedral or the path in none, you see. And I feel that architecture, therefore, has a duty to people way beyond what anyone can possibly pay for. Well, where then does this put the architect in terms of social conscience or implementation of things? Exactly, exactly. Especially we now that don't like modern so much anymore, I say we, differently in different times. But what we feel is that the glass, the glass flat top box, the box approach, left something out in the last 30 years of architecture, that there's emotional touch in people's hearts, that we've missed, because we were so moral, we just knew we were right to build these functionalist flat boxes, that people should look better in a glass box than they do in a nice homey, neo-Spanish home, why should they?

Maybe they were trying to tell us something that we weren't listening to, we feel we're listening much better now. I mean, for instance, if you build a, if you ask a child to draw a house, he draws a roof with a chimney, right? You ask a modern architect what a modern architect would do, how should look like he'd say something more like my glass house, just cut off with glass walls instead of windows. That's not what a home is to a child and to 99% of the people. So I think that we are going to, in the next coming times, serve the people much better. I think we have a moral almost feeling about that, that we feel the participation of people, the participation of preservationists, for instance, is new. The whole preservation movement is at 10 years old, 20. But in that time, it's now become a dominant force, you can't tear down buildings, look at, in Dallas where we saved the old, is it a courthouse there across in the county? Yes, the memorial. Thank goodness it's still there, but it wasn't, it wasn't so clear that it was going to be there only a few years ago, you see.

But now you couldn't imagine tearing it down, so has popular opinion of old things grown. And that's very healthy. We find, for instance, now in the great controversy over AT&T, why a controversy? It's the most simple, ordinary building. We are very surprised, but delighted. Because once more people are looking at architecture, and that, of course, is what all architects dream of, is love and care and attention, even though a few battles come along with it. People didn't know architects existed, you see, with somebody that do me a house, braw me a house, you know. Draw your blueprint. Yeah, make a blueprint, that's right, that's the thing. You're right, you understand what architects do with it, but a lot of people that don't. Now, how far then does that require you to go beyond the strict lines of your field? How far does that involve planning decisions, political involvement? How far do you have to step to get something to happen that you want to happen? Well, you're asking very difficult questions.

I know, I like to. I know, and it upsets that interviewee is something terrible. I think different architects would answer that in a different way. I just don't happen to be very political. We live in a great country, as far as I'm concerned, if I get a message, I do it. In other words, if I get paid very well to build skyscrapers, even though my own private opinion is that the future may not be in the skyscraper, maybe we'll find some other way to live without going up in tall buildings, especially from homes. Luis Mufford said it best, you can't have a baby in an elevator. It's contrary to children's playing and all sorts of family life. But I do not take a stand of that kind. As an architect, if in New York City you have to build high-rise apartments, we better find the most humane way we can to build those apartments that way, because it's a decision that's beyond the architectural profession. So I'm more or less a neutral, although a lot of my friends are work hard in the field of politics and sociology. I don't.

You see, in other words, you're going to get different answers. I'd rather build palaces for kings, cathedrals for bishops, skyscrapers for business tycoons and things like that, because I get the expression across quicker that I want to get. What about government buildings? They're the best. The best building, of course, would be what Franklin Wright always dreamed of, to build a new capital of America in the heartland of America instead of way on the east coast falling into the Atlantic Ocean, and whether he's right or wrong politically, I don't know. But you could see his sense of vision glowing to build a capital of the country in Missouri, which would indeed have been very, very interesting. And I think all our dreams of all architects, ever since the beginning, has been the building of cities, because that's where the Emerald City, for instance, in mythology are the great dream balabaster cities we talk about, or Augustus, the city found Brick of Rome and left it a marble. What a claim. I wish I were Augustus' architect, very rare that you chance to build, no, in fact never,

to build a whole city's where people would react from architecture here to architecture there as they go about their daily tasks. It'll be marvelous. You said somewhere not very long ago that you were an art historian and an architectural critic before you were an architect, and that that was your greatest. No, you said you were an eclectic and an art historian, and that that was your greatest weakness as an architect. What do you mean by that? Oh, no. I've just meant that that could be weakening if you know too much, as Peter Blake's article last week said Johnson knows too much, was the headline, I'm not sure what it meant, it wasn't a compliment. But in other words, little knowledge can get you in the way of your aesthetic creation, perhaps. I don't know, I don't think it has. And I think the more you know the more power you get into your architecture and knowledge and education, the main springs of architecture, it's true that the final jump of an artistic statement has to be done in the dark, has to be done without the tools, without a growing

board, like creation of music or anything else. It is finally, in the last analysis, a jump of imagination. And that comes out of what? Well, unfortunately, or unfortunately, you can't put it in the words, and you can't talk about it in any way. I was reading an interview with the coffin, the jockey, the day, and he has no idea why he knows about horses. So one thing he says, I think it's my hands, what's he talking about? How does he know his hands are any good? How do I know that my building is good, I don't, that's the horrible part. I'm faced with self doubt every single morning when I get up and then I go to bed at night. And I dream of total failures, we all do. This is the human condition. So it's partly luck, but all I know is it doesn't come from radiosination or knowledge that I can share with you in an interview or by writing. It has to be beyond words. All art is beyond words, dancing. Yes, I think I remember you saying that sociologists don't know anything about building

cities, only artists know how to build cities. If I didn't, I should have. Thank you all. That's what I ever did. I will. I will. I will say that. You gave it to me, I'll give it back to you. I know. But what about the whole business of city saving? Is this, you may feel that we've touched on this before. I don't see how your buildings can survive in a ruin. No, that's true. Oh, you mean about saving our city? Yes. Well, I think that now has become one of the main efforts of architecture. That's just what the AT&T is all about is the idea of preserving a great deal of the past and hooking on to it, I might say. It's like a button hook. You reach the thing, you don't remember shoes that had button hooks, but in the old days you put it through one hole and reach for the button and pull it out and pull it in a place. That's what we're doing with our newest work, like the Miami work and the New York work, is to reconnect the fabric, the context, that's the word I was looking for, contextualism is one of our new buzzwords to have to have them.

We fit into the context of the city as we find it, you see? Now it would be different in New Orleans, certainly, from New York, certainly in Miami from from Dallas and so on, but it is the duty of the architect to touch that nerve in some way. And you cannot just make a blueprint and stamp it on the desert and they suggest a new city. No, I'm just totally agreement with the preservationists. In fact, as a preservationist long before it became a popular thing. As an historian, naturally I was interested in saving Henry Hobbs and Richardson from destruction and more or less we have the better works. What of your work do you like best? The next one, right now AT&T is my love, quite naturally, except I'm now tempted I have a new project on Houston. Oh, it can't be published yet, but it's in Houston and it's a dream world. You see in Texas, you are the luckiest place in the world, you realize that of being on

the other side of the Opet Curtain, of being in a country that still has, I talk to a country because you have your own flag, it's a country with self confidence. It's a country not afraid of a few eggs going into an omelette. It's a country with the great roots in the past, but the great roots in the land. This vast, incredible, extensive land that we feel very a feat in European and old coming from the east. I'm too old to move here, but in a way I should have, because it's the vibrant place now in the world. There's one other, but that's doesn't for me, that's Israel, a country with a flag and determination, they don't have the land, but they have that kind of will to greatness that I find in Texas, that is extremely refreshing. The air just smells better down here. I have no idea why, we're all, you're from out of the state probably, and I'm a native. You're a native.

Well, well, there were Ozarks you mentioned before, so there isn't quite stateships. What is that native? All right, what is that? Have you any happy words of advice then for this new country of ours? Well, just look out that you're going to grow old, which no new country believes they are. So you can't do anything about growing old, it's the same thing happened to modern architecture itself. Fifty years ago was a great flag waving day of modern will conquer all, and then we'll all live happily ever afterwards. Well, we didn't feel much happier somehow, we won the battle all right, but all buildings became modern. Well, what, let's, let's analyze that a minute, what does modern mean to you? Well, modern to me. You agree? No, certainly not, modern to me, and it's just easier if you define it, means the international style. It's the architecture that came in in the 20s with Mise Corbusier-Gropier's employer. It means the architecture post-Frank Lloyd Wright, that is believed in certain very clear principles of economy, functionalism, structuralism, that is a building has to look like its structure,

you can't have fake buildings. Buildings had to be honest to their structural system, it all sounds laughable now, we pay no attention to structure. We still pay attention to functionalism, because after all, more and more, we've got to make our buildings, so they fit for the purpose. But we don't have to be structurally honest. Nobody minds a little decoration, we were very much in the old days, old new old days, old new days, against decoration, everything had to be completely spare, and all these chairs like these two chairs had to be absolutely the best use of material possible in the construction of them. And a Bucky Fuller carries it very far, the least material for the greatest effect. It was a great modern slogan, no longer, if you want to build in stone, which is of course more expensive than building in sheet glass. But why not? If it gives you a spiritual health, why not have a great fancy top on a building, if it's going to say that, is the 18th building when you're through?

How do you know one of these tall buildings from another in New York or in the most of a larger city? You can't. It's unidentifiable, they're faceless. We're going back to expression, to face to buildings, to building, say, oh yeah, that's the 18th building, that's the IBM building and so on. Can you make that happen? No. Oh no, we didn't. We, the architects are very late. It's the public. It's the public that gets bored with glass buildings. It's the energy crisis that says you can't build glass buildings, see? Endless boredom. When I built the pencil or place in Houston, Hugh Lifkey, the head of the company, says, I don't like these flat cigar boxes. We were delighted to hear that. But we got it from our clients. It wasn't the architects bringing this revolution to pass. It's the preservationists. It's the people bored with modern, what they thought is modern, you see? It's the desire of the people. Look how they're taken to the new hotel downtown because it's really quite a romantic pile

of shapes more than it is a old fashioned modern flat top building. How do you like our new city hall? Well, that's good, but you can then you pick the very best architects you see. That's nothing that Texas does like they pick me so often, but pays an excellent architect and it's not a flat building, it has a lot of character. But not everybody loves what pay does and not everybody loves what you do. Oh no, and they won't. And Viva de Fille House, I mean we're going to have more disagreements now, but that's what makes horsery, apart from me, that's what makes architecture, and horsery is a difference as an opinion. But nobody's afraid to air it anymore, the emperor's clothes were sort of modern architecture back in the 40s and 50s. If it wasn't a square, absolutely severe modern, you have one that's absolutely severe modern class mirror glass building and there was no objection to that, there was no conversation about it that I remember hearing, there was no complaints or praises about it. It was somebody's bank or other built a new building, you see.

There it was. That wouldn't happen now. I do think that the preservationists, the people that know the courthouses, Richard Sony and then like it would have something to say about it, you see. You will be receiving the gold medal of the American Institute of Architects. And I'm sure it must give you pleasure to be honored by your colleagues. Does it have some other special significance for me? It has special significance for me because I've always been anti-establishment, I've always been in the middle of controversies and battles and I haven't been very nice about the architectural profession and it's to me seeming lags and I've never been an organization boy, never been to a convention before. Therefore it is with almost tearful delight that I get this recognition from my peers, I never thought they'd give it to me, maybe just because I'm old. You know if you do live long enough you get the sooner light of the prizes have to come your way, but it's especially touching I think to me as an outsider. What do you want to be remembered for?

You're an historian. That's amusing, I should do some more thinking, I probably will be remembered most for the glass house since that whole set up there, started with the glass house and I built three four buildings since then on the place, I'm now giving it to the National Trust so it will be a museum and that's probably what I am best known for now. And I'm Barrett Knox Museum in Washington and of course the AT&T building, that depends on, oh no, I can't say what will be. What would you like to be? Well I can't tell you yet, the next three or four buildings will be the best. So I'm a late starter and I think this is going to be a glorious decade. Thank you so much. Thank you. I enjoyed talking to you very much with Swank.