Doing Their Own Thing

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act of building, but rather the permission it will grant other architects to build their own monuments of the hybrid. Johnson did not create the way of thinking that his building reflects. But he helped bring it about, and now he has given it a degree of public validity that cannot help affecting other corporate clients. Houses change the secret history of style, but monuments determine its public fate. Can one have a monument to doubt? Perhaps not. The idea would not have arisen 50 years ago. But what else, in a time of transition, questioning, and mannerism, can one expect?

—Robert Hughes