The piazza’s most immediate historical reference is to the Ro-
man forum (FIGS. 10-12and 10-43). However, its circular form al-
ludes to the ideal geometric figure of the Renaissance (FIG. 22-22).
The irregular placement of the concentrically arranged colonnade
fragments inserts a note of instability into the design reminiscent of
Mannerism (FIG. 22-54). Illusionistic devices, such as the continua-
tion of the piazza’s pavement design (apparently through a building
and out into the street), are Baroque in character (FIG. 24-4). Moore
incorporated all of the classical orders—most with whimsical modi-
fications. Nevertheless, challenging the piazza’s historical character
are modern features, such as the stainless-steel columns and capitals,
neon collars around the column necks, and neon lights that frame
various parts of the exedra.
In sum, Moore designed the Piazza d’Italia as a complex con-
glomeration of symbolic, historical, and geographic allusions—some
overt and others obscure. Although the piazza’s specific purpose was
to honor the Italian community of New Orleans, its more general
purpose was to revitalize an urban area by becoming a focal point
and an architectural setting for the social activities of neighborhood
residents. Unfortunately, the piazza suffered extensive damage during
Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
PHILIP JOHNSONEven architects instrumental in the prolif-
eration of the modernist idiom embraced postmodernism. Early in his
career,Philip Johnson(1906–2005), for example, had been a leading
proponent of modernism and worked with Mies van der Rohe on the
design of the Seagram Building (FIG. 36-60). Johnson had even served
as the director of the Department of Architecture at New York’s Mu-
seum of Modern Art, the bastion of modernism, from 1930 to 1934
and from 1946 to 1954. Yet he made one of the most startling shifts of
style in 20th-century architecture, eventually moving away from the se-
vere geometric formalism exemplified by the Seagram Building to a
classicizing transformation of it in his AT&T (American Telephone and
Telegraph) Building (FIG. 36-64)—now the Sony Building—in New
York City. Architect John Burgee(b. 1933) codesigned it with assis-
tance from the firm Simmons Architects.This structure was influen-
tial in turning architectural taste and practice away from modernism
and toward postmodernism—from organic “concrete sculpture” and
the rigid “glass box” to elaborate shapes, motifs, and silhouettes freely
adapted from historical styles (see “Philip Johnson on Postmodernist
Architecture,” above).
The 660-foot-high slab of the AT&T Building is mostly granite.
Johnson reduced the window space to some 30 percent of the building,Architecture and Site-Specific Art 1009P
hilip Johnson, who died in 2005 at age 98, had a distinguished
career that spanned almost the entire 20th century, during
which he transformed himself from a modernist closely associated
with Mies van der Rohe (FIG. 36-60) into one of the leading postmod-
ernists, whose AT&T Building (FIG. 36-64) in New York City remains
an early icon of postmodernism. The following remarks illustrate
Johnson’s thoughts about his early “Miesian” style and about the in-
corporation of various historical styles in postmodernist buildings.
My eyes are set by the Miesian tradition ....The continuity with
my Miesian approach also shows through in my classicism....
[But in] 1952, about the same time that my whole generation did,
I became very restless....In the last decade there has been such a
violent switch that it is almost embarrassing. But it isn’t a switch,
so much as a centrifugal splintering of architecture, to a degree that
I don’t think has been seen in the past few hundred years. Perfectly
responsible architects build, even in one year, buildings that you
cannot believe are done by the same person.*
Structural honesty seems to me one of the bugaboos that we should
free ourselves from very quickly. The Greeks with their marble
columns imitating wood, and covering up the roofs inside! The
Gothic designers with their wooden roofs above to protect their
delicate vaulting. And Michelangelo, the greatest architect in history,
with his Mannerist column! There is only one absolute today and
this is change. There are no rules, surely no certainties in any of the
arts. There is only the feeling of a wonderful freedom, of endless
possibilities to investigate, of endless past years of historically great
buildings to enjoy.†
* Quoted in Paul Heyer,Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America
(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993), 285–286.
† Ibid., 279.Philip Johnson
on Postmodern ArchitectureARTISTS ON ART36-64Philip
Johnsonand John
Burgee(with
Simmons Archi-
tects), AT&T
(now Sony) Building,
New York, 1978–1984.
In a startling shift
of style, modernist
Johnson (FIG. 36-60)
designed this post-
modernist skyscraper
with more granite
than glass and with
a variation on a clas-
sical pediment as the
crowning motif.