Quote

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.

Philip Johnson

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Philip Johnson
Age: 98 †
Born: 1906
Born: July 8
Died: 2005
Died: January 25
Architect
Art Historian
Cleveland
Ohio
Philip Cortelyou Johnson
Phillip Johnson
Point
Twist
History
Twists
Thing
Mold
Something
Onto
Make
Riches
Like
Improve
Deny
Buttoned
Tradition
Plucked

More quotes by Philip Johnson

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I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.
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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.
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Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.
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Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.
Philip Johnson
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I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.
Philip Johnson
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The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.
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We do pretty much whatever we want to.
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Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
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I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
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Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.
Philip Johnson
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The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.
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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.
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I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?
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Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.
Philip Johnson
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I hate the celebrity architect thing. I just do my work. The press comes up with this stuff and it sticks. I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.
Philip Johnson
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In our greatest universities, naturalism - the doctrine that nature is all there is - is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds.
Philip Johnson
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Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.
Philip Johnson
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I guess I can't be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring.
Philip Johnson
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Glibness will get your anywhere.
Philip Johnson