Shaping the Future

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Jan. 4, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES ARCHITECTURE CRITIC

Now 92, Philip Johnson has reigned as the undisputed dean of American architecture for nearly three-quarters of a century. His broad--sometimes fickle--tastes have allowed him to play a central role in all of the key architectural movements of the modern era, first as the curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art who introduced European Modernism to this country in the 1930s, then as a collaborator with the great German architect Mies van der Rohe, and later as a Postmodern architect and a supporter of younger talents such as Frank Gehry and Peter Eisenman. More recently, his unquenchable curiosity has led him to experiment with more sculptural forms, light-years away from the sleek, clean lines of the structures that still rank among his best work as an architect.

Question: You’ve seen--in fact, taken part in--most of the major events in architecture of this century. What do you think is the state of the profession today. Are things getting better?

Answer: The art of architecture is all over the place, which is wonderful and enlightening and freedom-making. All we do is use our imagination to the fullest and test out the waters, namely the client world. So the problem with all architecture--it always has been--is the clients. And they have one aim only, and that is to save money. And we architects are rather inclined in the opposite direction. . . . So the battle goes on between the clients and the architects. The less artistically minded architects--I mean the Skidmore Owings and Merrills of this world--go on and they do excellent work, but that’s not what we call the art of architecture. The art of architecture is those individual designs that vie with paintings and sculpture. . . . I am naturally a great believer in sculpture taking over the leading direction of architecture. That’s what architecture is. Remember Arthur Drexler said automobiles were hollow rolling sculpture. . . . So the sculptural look of the work is the thing that is most important. Now that means all directions of sculpture, of course.

Q: Much of the sculptural work you’re talking about, in fact, has been attacked by some as no longer being about architecture, not in the Modernist, functional sense.

A: Modernism is an old word, almost a word of denigration now. Some people call it contemporary, but that’s hopeless too. It’s just architecture. It always has been. Frank Gehry is the greatest architect in the world now, in my opinion. And he leads the way in making sculpture usable, and making it beautiful. So it vies, in my opinion, with the architecture of the past, with the great cathedrals. At the other end we might put [Berlin-based] Daniel Libeskind. He does sharp angles, but they are sculptural as well. This year I visited what I think is his greatest work to date, the Felix Nussbaum [gallery in Osnabruck, Germany]. . . . The long lines clashing with each other, the sharp triangles. That’s beautiful. And a third direction is Rem Koolhaas. I visited the house at Bordeaux and I loved it. But I call it an anti-house. Because it doesn’t look like a house. That’s an old-fashioned way of speaking, isn’t it?

Q: You began your career as a devout Modernist, however. How would you compare work such as this with the masterpieces, for example, of the Modernist Age--Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion--all the obvious ones?

A: I think it’s quite different. And I think it’s our own, and God bless our own day and God bless the future. I have no idea what direction we’re going to go in. We’re looking at individual artists, like Rembrandt and Poussin. They were very different artists, but they lived at the same time. Picasso didn’t know Pollock, but so what? They’re both great artists, and that’s all you have to have in painting. It’s only in architecture that we tend to make these categories. But I just don’t think that we can categorize where architecture is at, at the end of the millennium. I think you just have to say it is a wonderful, total, absolute chaos. Art is a different problem; you don’t have to get over the modern masters, the way people my age do. It has been an interesting struggle. You know, I’m building something in Telluride, and they have strict rules about roofs, for instance. Well, I feel freer now to wander among the shapes available than at any other time. So I’m having a delightful time breaking all the possible rules within the ridiculous set of rationales that they set up.

Q: What led us to this point, do you think? What broke things apart and created a condition that is so open, at least formally?

A: I don’t think anyone can say. I think the times change and we change, from certainty to uncertainty. After all, the Parthenon was built by a sculptor. And, of course, mathematicians were responsible for the cathedrals. But that was a day when they were absolutely fascinated by vaulting problems. Well, today we’re not. Even in the engineering world there are people like Cecil Balmond, who says, “Why build the straight lines, you don’t have to.” So we all hide behind Cecil! He’s available to us all in a delicious way that [earlier engineers] never were. It gives us a freedom with the engineering that we never had. It’s wonderful.

Q: It must be a shock for someone who lived through the heyday of Modernism, and then so-called Postmodernism, and now this.

A: I’m leaving myself out of this whole picture. I don’t know where I fit in and nor do I care. All I can say is that we’re all enjoying life so much more now with this new freedom. Because now you can concentrate on art, what is the artistic way to solve this particular problem. I’m doing a garage on Times Square. Well, for God’s sake, it’s a garage. But you can have fun if you restrict yourself to where you can have fun. That’s what I’m doing now. Frank [Gehry] is the only man that broke through that barrier of the developer world, and I just can’t get over my admiration for him for that.

Q: One of the things we haven’t discussed is the public’s changing perception of architecture. One of the problems for architects is the public’s continued architectural illiteracy, despite the fact that it is the most public of arts.

A: Yes, of course. Well, I don’t find it any better. I still think it’s a great exception to do a Seagram building. You have to have a mad father with a totally mad daughter, for example. They put that thing together against the will of the real estate community. They called on [Bronfman] to please not build it, it would ruin the market, but son of a gun he did.

Q: Who else is emerging today as a true talent? Who else excites you?

A: Well, Rem [Koolhaas] is a hard one, because he’s never tried to be pretty or engaging or anything. But he’s so full of incredible tricks. My favorite thing in [his recent design for a house in Bordeaux] is as you come up that steep driveway. You turn around in a circle, you keep turning around and the car goes down about 10 feet. It’s an emotional feeling you get that you are already falling. Now imagine that--thinking of a trick, if that’s what you want to call it, like that. That’s another way of looking at architecture.

Q: Well, this brings us back to your earlier comments. What we judge as being architecture and not being architecture has changed over time.

A: I like that way of putting it. Maybe architects have now become as broad as the artists. I have a simple word and it doesn’t fit anything. Do I get a kick, a wow. And I get a wow out of things as different as those three people. So to me that represents three very wonderful directions.

Q: And those criteria have never changed for you, after all these years?

A: Same thing. Le Corbusier, Mies, Wright. Take [Frank Lloyd Wright’s] Johnson Wax building. It was the greatest building of that time. So I could wax enthusiastic about Johnson Wax almost as much as Gehry’s [Guggenheim Museum] Bilbao. At Bilbao I just get tears in my eyes. But I don’t really want to admit that.

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Crossroads

The daily Calendar section will continue through Jan. 7 its series of interviews, conducted by Times critics, with leaders in the arts and entertainment.

DECEMBER 28

Movies: Steven Spielberg

DECEMBER 29

Classical music: MaryAnn Bonino

DECEMBER 30

Television: Jeff Greenfield

DECEMBER 31

Jazz: Tommy LiPuma

JAN. 1

Dance: Garth Fagan

JAN. 2

Restaurants: Nobu Matsuhisa