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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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Philip Johnson
Age: 98 †
Born: 1906
Born: July 8
Died: 2005
Died: January 25
Architect
Art Historian
Cleveland
Ohio
Philip Cortelyou Johnson
Phillip Johnson
Enjoy
Burnt
House
Italy
Music
Houses
Years
Opera
People
Neither
Gave
Hear
Seeing

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Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.
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There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.
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Architecture is art, nothing else.
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All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.
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Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.
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Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
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The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.
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When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.
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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.
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Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.
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[Evolution] doesn't mean God-guided, gradual creation. It means unguided, purposeless change. The Darwinian theory doesn't say that God created slowly. It says that naturalistic evolution is the creator, and so God had nothing to do with it.
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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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Scientific naturalism is a story that reduces reality to physical particles and impersonal laws, [and] portrays life as a meaningless competition among organisms that exist only to survive and reproduce.
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Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
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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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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.
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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?
Philip Johnson
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American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.
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.
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Pick very few objects and place them exactly.
Philip Johnson