US architecture and design school Harvard GSD has removed Philip Johnson's name from a house he built while studying at the institution in response to a campaign calling for a rethink of the Nazi-supporting late architect's legacy.
Harvard Graduate School of Design announced this week it has renamed the house Johnson designed and built in the 1940s as his GSD thesis project.
Formerly known as Philip Johnson Thesis House, the single-storey dwelling is now named after its address, 9 Ash Street.
Philip Johnson is "an inappropriate namesake"
The move is a response to a campaign by activist organisation The Johnson Study Group that has also called on New York's Museum of Modern Art to remove Johnson's name from a curatorial post in light of the architect's "commitment to white supremacy". MoMA employs a Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design to honour Johnson's involvement at the museum, where he funded the creation of its architecture department.
However, according to The Johnson Study Group, the architect's "significant and consequential" commitment to white supremacy meant he should no longer be celebrated by public institutions.
Portrait of Philip Johnson by B Pietro Filardo
"We call on the Museum of Modern Art, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and any other public-facing nonprofit in the United States to remove the name of Philip Johnson from every leadership title, public space and honorific of any form," the gro...