Lipstick Building
IN THE Lipstick Building, Philip Johnson put forth an even more heretical proposition than the assertion that applied symbolism was more interesting than structural expression: they dared to say that architecture was a game of passing styles, more akin to
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THIRD AVENUE
JOHN BURGEE WITH PHILIP JOHNSON ,
n t h e Lipstick Building, Philip Johnson put forth an even more heretical proposition than the assertion that applied symbolism was more interesting than structural expression: they dared to say that architecture was a game of passing styles, more akin to fashion than a search for perfect forms. Johnson began to refer to a building’s exterior cladding as “heavy dress,” implying that architectural style had no more real significance than hemline lengths. Such talk made the architects who were looking to add their designs to the canon of twentieth-century architecture nervous. But if fashion is so transient, why does the Lipstick work so hard to be a singularity? The 36-story story, elliptical, dusty-rose glass and granite façade evokes the glamour of Art Deco. Immediately dubbed “the Lipstick” because of its three-tiered telescoping parti, the off-center tower recalls the smokestacks of a luxury steamship, but does not quite look like anything that came before it. The whole building has a nervous, unstable energy, a faster-motion version of the Flatiron’s forward-looking modernism. The brushed steel bands of the wobbly façade catch the light like bangles on the arm of a woman making a hectic gesture at a party. Further, glass buildings were usually envisioned as faceted crystals, whereas this one is smooth; they are supposed to be light, while this one has the ponderousness of stone. Buildings are supposed to be enduring statements, but Johnson and Burgee seem to have chosen a nail-polish color from the mid-1980s and applied it to their façade, making it as much a period piece as Raymond Hood’s sea-green McGraw-Hill Building. From his offices on the sixteenth floor of the Lipstick, Johnson seems to have gone completely against his early manifesto with HenryRussell Hitchcock, The International Style (1932), which grew out of their definitive exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art that same year. Instead of a smooth, continuous surface that
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expresses volume, the Lipstick has a bumptious, segmented curve that calls attention to itself not as a container of space, but as an irregular sculptural line. The principle of regularity, too, goes by the boards. The Lipstick’s ellipsoidal ceilings are wildly impractical from the point of view of installing standardized lighting and ventilation fixtures. Discontinuity is emphasized at every level; the twinned columns at the base look ready to march off in different directions like giant soldiers from The Nutcracker Suite. The capitals do not quite seem to touch the lintels, which adds to the impression of instability. “I’m a jumper-arounder anyhow,” Johnson wrote in the foreword to the 1995 edition of The International Style. “Architecture’s hold as art on professional and public intent is as precarious as it was in 1932.” In his latest work, Johnson appears to be abandoning all notions of Euclidean geometry with his project for the boneless Peter Lewis Guest House (1995) in Lyndhurst, Ohio.
[ 1 ] The ellipsoidal floo
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