Page "Philip Johnson" Paragraph 25

The AT & T Building in Manhattan, now the Sony Building, was completed in 1984 and was immediately controversial for its neo-Georgian pediment ( Chippendale top ).

At the time, it was seen as provocation on a grand scale: crowning a Manhattan skyscraper with a shape echoing a historical wardrobe top defied every precept of the modernist aesthetic: historical pattern had been effectively outlawed among architects for years.

In retrospect other critics have seen the AT & T Building as the first Postmodernist statement, necessary in the context of modernism's aesthetic cul-de-sac.

In 1987, Johnson was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Houston.

The institution's Hines College of Architecture is also housed in one of Johnson's buildings.