Explore Quotes by Philip Johnson

Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.

There's only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction.

I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?

Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.

I'm about four skyscrapers behind.

It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you're nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing - wonderful.

Dullness is the enemy.

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.

The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.

When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.

The practice of architecture is the most delightful of all pursuits. Also, next to agriculture, it is the most necessary to man. One must eat, one must have shelter. Next to religious worship itself, it is the spiritual handmaiden of our deepest convictions.

Pick very few objects and place them exactly.

Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.

I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.

We all see the world differently. And thank God for that. Otherwise, what a boring world this would be.

To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own.

Processionalism is primary - how you get from one place to another, the relationships and effects of spaces as you move about in them. That's worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I'm a 'straight-in' man myself; I'm too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I'm going.

I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.

In my own work, I'd say I'm a classicist, but I look everywhere for my solutions. I don't study the toilet-living habits of my clients, although that's a popular approach. First, I think of every building in history that has been similar in purpose. Then I think of the functional program - that's a major part of the study.

Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?

Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.