Wall Street Journal architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable writes this interesting op-ed ($) on the late Philip Johnson‘s career, in which she makes this interesting observation:

His fame made him the “signature architect” for corporate headquarters and commercial developers. The AT&T Building’s much-publicized “Chippendale” top put him on the cover of Time magazine, cradling the model in his arms. But his nimble intelligence and excellent eye failed to produce more than a pictorial pastiche that was flat and one-dimensional or a shallow sendup of the past. What was meant to be monumental was merely big and flaccid.
Whatever Philip Johnson’s legacy turns out to be, it will not rest on his buildings. His dedication to the art that was central to his existence, his proselytizing zeal for new work that pushes concept and practice beyond existing limits, his driving belief in architecture as the defining art of the present and the past, did much to re-establish a sense of the importance of the way we build in an age that worships the beauty of the bottom line. In his own way, perhaps he did change the world.