Roberto Gargiani

Roberto Gargiani – Truth and Disguises: Philip Johnson and the Non-Miesian Directions The oeuvre of Philip Johnson can be described, says Roberto Gargiani, as a reaction to the work of Mies van der Rohe. Mies turned structural elements into symbolic icons of a new
architectural order. The connections between these elements are at the base of Johnson’s artistic identity. He discovered a repertoire of forms by developing plastic variations of concrete, and by inventing a nonMiesian plasticity. Instead of making copies raisonnées of Mies’s buildings, Johnson ended up assigning a pop-aura to elements from the oeuvre of his preceptor.