Mies van der Rohe – The Built Work 9783038212874, 9783034607407

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Mies Van der Rohe the built work

Mies Van der Rohe the built work Carsten Krohn

Birkhäuser Basel

Layout, cover design and typography: Annette Kern, Hamburg Copy editing and project management: Henriette Mueller-Stahl, Berlin Translation from German into English: Julian Reisenberger, Weimar Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the ­Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the German National Lib­ rary. The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. This book is also available in a German language edition (ISBN 978–3–0346–0739–1).

© 2014 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel P.O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland Part of De Gruyter Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞ Printed in Germany ISBN 978–3–0346–0740–7 987654321 www.birkhauser.com

We kindly thank FSB Franz Schneider Brakel GmbH + Co KG for their support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

8

Introduction

16

Riehl House Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1908

20

Perls House Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany, 1911–12

24

Kröller-Müller House, Façade Mock-up Wassenaar, Netherlands, 1912–13

28

Werner House Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany, 1912–13

32

Warnholtz House Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, 1914–15

33

Urbig House Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1915–17

35

Tombstone for Laura Perls Berlin-Weißensee, Germany, 1919

36

Kempner House Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, 1921–23

40

Eichstaedt House Berlin-Nikolassee, Germany, 1921–23

41

Feldmann House Berlin-Grunewald, Germany, 1921–23

42

Ryder House Wiesbaden, Germany, 1923–27

43

Gymnasium for Frau Butte’s Private School Potsdam, Germany, 1924–25

44

Mosler House Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1924–26

49

Urban House, Conversion Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, 1924–26

50

Housing on the Afrikanische Straße Berlin-Wedding, Germany, 1925–27

56

Wolf House Guben, Poland, 1925–27

57

Monument to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg Berlin-Lichtenberg, Germany, 1926

58

Weißenhofsiedlung Apartment Block Stuttgart, Germany, 1926–27

62

Glass Room Stuttgart, Germany, 1927

63

Samt und Seide Café (Velvet and Silk Café) Berlin, Germany, 1927

64

Fuchs Gallery, Addition to the Perls House Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany, 1927–28

5

68

Lange and Esters Houses Krefeld, Germany, 1927–30

128

Crown Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1950–56

76

Barcelona Pavilion International Exposition, Barcelona, Spain, 1928–29

134

IIT Halls of Residence Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1951–55

81

German Electrical Industry Pavilion World Exposition, Barcelona, Spain, 1929

136

Association of American Railroads Mechanical Laboratory Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1952–53

82

Tugendhat House Brno, Czech Republic, 1928–30

137

Commons Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1952–54

88

Henke House, Addition Essen, Germany, 1930

138

Electrical Engineering and Physics Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1954–56

89

Verseidag Factory Krefeld, Germany, 1930–31, 1935

139

Association of American Railroads Engineering Laboratory Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1955–57

94

Model House for the Berlin Building Exposition Berlin, Germany, 1931

140

Siegel Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1955–58

95

Trinkhalle (Refreshment Stand) Dessau, Germany, 1932

142

Farnsworth House Plano, Illinois, USA, 1945–51

96

Lemke House Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, Germany, 1932–33

148

Promontory Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1946–49

102

Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, USA, 1941–58

152

Algonquin Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1948–50

106

Minerals and Metals Research Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1941–43, 1956–58

153

Arts Club of Chicago Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1948–51

111

Engineering Research Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1943–46

154

860–880 Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1948–51

112

Perlstein Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1944–47

159

McCormick House Elmhurst, Illinois, USA, 1951–52

114

Alumni Memorial Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1945–46

160

Greenwald House Weston, Connecticut, USA, 1951–56

118

Wishnick Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1945–46

161

Commonwealth Promenade Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1953–57

120

Central Vault Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1946

162

Esplanade Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1953–57

121

Institute of Gas Technology Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1947–50

166

Seagram Building New York, USA, 1954–58

122

Association of American Railroads Research Laboratory Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1948–50

172

Lafayette Park Detroit, Michigan, USA, 1955–58

123

Boiler Plant Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1948–50

178

Colonnade and Pavilion Apartments Newark, New Jersey, USA, 1958–60

124

Chapel Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1949–52

182

Bacardi Office Building Mexico City, Mexico, 1958–61

126

Test Cell Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1950–52

184

One Charles Center Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 1958–62

127

Mechanics Research Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1950–52

186

Lafayette Towers Detroit, Michigan, USA, 1959–63

6

188

Federal Center Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1959–74

192

Home Federal Savings and Loan Association Des Moines, Iowa, USA, 1960–63

194

2400 Lakeview Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1962–63

196

Highfield House Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 1962–64

202

Social Service Administration University of Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1962–64

204

Meredith Hall Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, USA, 1962–65

206

Science Center Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 1962–68

208

Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin-Tiergarten, Germany, 1962–68

216

Toronto-Dominion Centre Toronto, Canada, 1963–69

220

Westmount Square Montreal, Canada, 1964–68

224

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library Washington, D.C., USA, 1965–72

226

Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas, USA, 1954–58, 1965–74

228

Nuns’ Island Apartments Montreal, Canada, 1966–69

230

IBM Building Chicago, USA, 1966–72

232

111 East Wacker Drive Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1967–70

234

Service Station Montreal, Canada, 1968

236

Subject Index Illustration Credits

237 238 240

Chronological Bibliography About the Author

7

Introduction

8

Over the past few years, I’ve often been asked: “A book about Mies – what more is there to say?” The idea for this project came about during a vision to the Colonnade and Pavilion Apartments in Newark, New Jersey, in October 2009. Several years earlier, an artist in New York showed me a Super 8 film of these buildings which I’d never heard of despite having read several books on the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) and having studied for a while in New York. I was sceptical – perhaps Mies had acted simply as a consultant. Years later, on the occasion of a lecture I gave at Columbia University on urban utopias for Berlin, I decided to pay the buildings a visit. I was surprised to find the buildings were only 20 minutes by train from New York’s Penn Station. The two monumental slabs can be seen rising into the sky immediately behind Newark Broad Street Station in a district that has a reputation as being unsafe. I was immediately smitten by the view from the platform (see page 182, top): it was the built embodiment of the vision that Ludwig Hilberseimer, an urban planner and close collaborator of Mies, had elaborated in texts and images for Berlin. Only as I began to explore the complex did I properly comprehend its urban dimensions, which are defined by a third high-rise slab located some 600 metres further away. It was a stormy day and the thin panes of glass in the still original aluminium façade – designed in Mies’ office – vibrated with shivering reflections of the clouds. In the 50 years since they were built, the profile of the residents has shifted radically: originally built to house white middle-class workers, it is now almost exclusively occupied by African American tenants. I asked the resident manager whether they received many architecturally interested visitors and was told that they had one visitor last year. The complex is evidently not a popular destination for architecture tourists and – as I would later find out – like many of Mies’ other built works, is relatively unknown compared with his famous buildings such as the Barcelona Pavilion, the Seagram Building and in particular the unbuilt projects such as the Skyscraper for the Friedrichstraße Railway Station in Berlin. In my numerous conversations with architects, theorists and historians during my research for Das ungebaute Berlin, 1 Mies van der Rohe emerged as the most important figure for the present day. His work has been enormously influential for contemp­orary architectural practice. He himself hoped that his work would be judged by the degree to which others adopted the principles he had developed. Rather than seeking a unique, individual form of expression, he strove to find generally applicable principles: “I think the influence my work has on other people is based on its reasonableness. Everybody can use it without being a copyist, because it is quite objective, and I think if I find something objective I will use it. It does not matter who did it.”2 This rational approach differs markedly, for example, from that of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose creations became ever more fantastic over the course of his career. During the same period, Mies’ model of a high-rise tower became an almost ubiquitous element of many North American cities. They were seen as being timeless. Today, in the context of the formal excesses of the last 15 years and the drive to create ever more spectacular and eccentric gestures, Mies’ focus on the elementary aspects of architecture has once again gained relevance. The more I saw and the more I read, the more I felt that the image portrayed in the available literature was distorted. Research on Mies has concentrated on his canonical works and long been reluctant to consider all his buildings as equally significant works in his oeuvre. In the first book published on Mies in 1947, Philip Johnson writes: “All the buildings and projects which Mies considers in any way important are illustrated in this volume, with the exception of a few buildings which were not exe­ cuted according to his standards […].”3 In actual fact only about

half of his European buildings are shown, and even the two later volumes Mies in Berlin and Mies in America, published in 2001, show only about half his buildings with photos. When asked which of his buildings he felt was most important, Mies responded simply that “no single building stands out.” 4 Taking him at his word, this volume sets out to document his complete oeuvre of built works for the first time.5 Each building is documented in the same way one after the other so that the whole represents a genealogy of built form. Without seeing this developmental process, it is impossible to categorically conclude whether Mies’ work is characterised by radical changes or continuity. Over the past few years I have visited and documented all of Mies’ surviving built works, in the process becoming a photographer. The book documents every one of Mies’ 80 realised buildings and building complexes arranged in chronological order. Only the buildings for the Illinois Institute of Technology are grouped together in a block as they were conceived as a coherent ensemble. Thirty of the buildings – marked in bold type in the ­table of contents – have been analysed and described in more detail. The analysis of each building follows an identical three-stage methodical structure. To begin with, the building is documented as it was actually built. The second section then documents any “Later alterations” made to the building, while the third section examines the rele­ vance of the results of the analysis for our view of Mies’ work and contribution today. This third step – “The building as seen from the present” – examines the built work not in relation to its genesis in a historical context but in terms of its design from an architectural standpoint. While existing books on Mies consider both his built and unbuilt work together, separating the “significant” work from the “insignificant”, the intention here is to communicate an impression of the spatial dimension of the buildings as they are experi­ enced by the user or visitor. The buildings are analysed with respect to their relationship to place, how one moves through them, the orchestration of light and visual axes as well as their materiality and tectonics. While Mies described “building [as] giving form to reality,” 6 from a phenomenological viewpoint, we see these buildings today not just as environments for living in but also as buildings shaped by the reality of having been used. Almost all of Mies’ buildings have been altered in some, not always immediately perceptible, way or other. By looking back at his architecture from a contemporary perspective, we also consider them in terms of the changes made, the different purposes they have served as well as, in some cases, their destruction. The documentation of the built works also enables us to examine the central themes that characterise Mies’ architecture. The connection between indoors and outdoors, the articulation of how the building meets the ground or the structural separation of column and wall are just some of the recurring themes in his work. The continuity of the principles that Mies adhered to connect his earlier and later work, even though they look quite different on the outside. Mies strove to find simple but exemplary solutions for elementary transitions and junctions. For con­ temporary architects, it is interesting to study how Mies resolved junctions between different materials and transitions from mono­­­­ lithic walls to glazed surfaces, the different forms that the corners of buildings take in different constellations or how compact cores have been placed in open-plan layouts. Mies created closed and open “flowing” spaces, and was also not afraid to combine different spatial concepts. The spatial arrangement of the buildings is shown using floor plans and site plans, which instead of showing an idealised plan from the design phase show the situation as built. All of the plans

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Riehl House, Neubabelsberg 1908

Reconstruction of the garden façade, photomontage

Hall, reconstruction of the original colour scheme

9

have been redrawn by myself, based on the working drawings. Because many of Mies’ American buildings were built in collab­or­­ ation with other architecture offices, many of the relevant working drawings are not in the Mies van der Rohe Archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York nor in the various published volumes of The Mies van der Rohe Archive. The architecture offices responsible for the restoration of Mies’ buildings were most helpful, as were public records, building surveys and the archives of the owners. The existing monographs on Mies almost exclusively show cleaned presentation drawings without legends or dimensions, partly because the information contained within the working drawings becomes illegible when reduced in size and the plans themselves become harder to read. To reconstruct the drawings, historical photographs as well as the buildings themselves proved to be an invaluable source. The formal presentation of the newly drawn floor plans echoes the reductive character of the plans that Mies published. Although he highlighted the objective character of his principles, the resulting work and the drawings of them are often idiosyncratic. The new floor plans published here contain only what is absolutely necessary and aim to be as consistent as possible, lending them an objective character. Furnishings, paving patterns, vegetation, the arcs of door openings, directions of stairs and ramps as well as the labelling of the individual rooms have all been omitted in favour of showing the building structure as clearly as possible. The built elements of external landscaping and gardens designed by Mies, some of which have been reconstructed from aerial photographs, are also shown. The plans have been drawn consistently to a scale of 1:400 and oriented north. Ensembles of buildings are shown at a scale of 1:4000 and details at a scale of 1:10. Each building is shown with at least one floor plan or site plan. Because relevant plans were not always available, not all buildings are illustrated with a floor plan. The drawings comprise lines and surfaces all drawn with the same line thickness. The photographs take an analytical view of the respective buildings and concentrate predominantly on the built structures, leaving out later conversions, current uses or changed urban surroundings wherever possible. The focus lies on the building substance and the detailing, as well as the placement of the building in the landscape. Both the earlier private houses as well as the later high-rise towers were placed at prominent positions, usually adjoining a park or a lake. For the Lafayette Park Estate, for example, it took decades for the trees to grow to maturity. The photos show that the architecture has transcended time. In cases where buildings have been altered to such a degree that the original conception is no longer visible – for examples the garden façade of Mies’ very first work, the Riehl House – the original situation can be shown by means of a photographic montage. Another approach is to colourise black-and-white photographs to show the original colour scheme. Thomas Ruff, for example, created a series of photographs of Mies’ works that consciously manipulates new and historic photographs. Digital techniques have greatly simplified the retouching of photographs, and such techniques are now common practice in architectural photography. The photographs in this book have not been retouched and have a strictly documentary character. Although most of Mies’ buildings are now listed, the building substance is still in danger of being lost during renovation works. Many typical Miesian elements, such as his minimalist balustrades, do not conform to current building regulations and are thus often the target of modernisation measures. Other buildings, such as the IIT Test Cell from 1950–52, simply stood in the way of new building projects and were demolished. Built situations are not the only aspects that change over time; so too does the appreciation of architecture, which in turn is influenced by

10

the respective ideological climate. For example, the attitude towards vast apartment blocks has changed fundamentally since the 1960s when the Colonnade and Pavilion Apartments were built. Past research also sidelined certain projects. Mies’ personal path to radical modernism was, for example, by no means as linear as it is often portrayed. The conventional houses that Mies built during the 1920s – some of them after publishing a series of avant-garde projects in the press – were deemed simply bread-and-butter work.7 In her book Mies in America, Phyllis Lambert attempts to highlight the works where Mies himself was more intensely involved in the design process. Mies, however, stated that: “I don’t make every building different.” 8 Mies’ own standpoint was influenced by the particular course of his career. Ludwig Mies – he added van der Rohe later – did not study as an architect 9 but learned his trade from scratch working in practice: “I learned from my father. He was a stonemason. […] My father said, ‘Don’t read these dumb books. Work.’” 10 Although he did develop a strong interest in philosophical writings and published texts of his own, Mies would always emphasise the enormous influence of his background as a craftsman in Aachen on his personal development. The discipline he applied to developing the building construction can be seen in the extreme attention he gave to the details. This precision contrasts markedly with the later works of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius and is one of the reasons for his lasting influence to the present day. Even after more than half a century, few buildings around the world can claim to be detailed to the same exacting level of quality as the Seagram Building. Its clarity of expression set a benchmark that many contemporary buildings still fail to measure up to. Looking back, Mies described the development of his work as a persistent path of striving for clarity of construction. His obsessive search for order means that his work can be seen as an ongoing process of optimisation. His high-rise towers are in principle essentially identical skeleton frame constructions that permit an open-plan floor plan, but he refined the detailing with each new building. While the early apartment blocks on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago exhibit numerous deficits with respect to their building physics, the later towers resolved many of these problems. Ironically, although the quality of the construction of the later buildings is much better, in history books they are regarded as being less architecturally significant than the earlier prototypes. When Mies said, “I always apply the same principles,”11 he was referring to rational aspects that can be taught and analysed. The building analyses in this book elaborate the principles that Mies sought to communicate as a teacher: “You can teach students how to work; you can teach them technique – how to use reason; you can even give them a sense of proportions – of order. You can teach general principles.” 12 In the 1920s, Mies presented five speculative projects – two glass skyscrapers, an office building, and two country houses, one made of ferro-concrete, the other of brick – that explored the constructional possibilities of particular building materials. With the exception of the Skyscraper on the Friedrichstraße, none of the projects were designed for a specific location. They were instead programmatic, visionary concepts that explored a “principle” to the point that the images acquired an iconic character. In his floor plan for a skyscraper with polygonal curves that aimed to achieve a “rich play by the reflection of light”13 he did not show the supporting structure at all. Similarly, his floor plan for the brick country house is more abstract and schematic in character than a floor plan for a real building. The diagrammatic character of these designs is significant because it would later influence his built work.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Glass skyscraper, 1922, floor plan

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Project for a brick country house, 1924, floor plan

introduction

11

4

3

1

9

10

2 8

6 5

7 11

12 1 Vestibule 2 Hall 3 Salon 4 Dining room 5 Gentleman’s study 6 Living room 7 Anteroom 8 Lady’s quarters 9 Exhibition gallery 10 Garden with fountain 11 Greenhouse 12 Water basin

12

Peter Behrens, Kröller-Müller House, Proposal from 1911, ground floor plan

Despite the vehemence with which Mies opposed individualistic solutions, the buildings he created were very often unique and he was commonly regarded as an artist. The rational principles that he propagated were more a means to an end, as he believed strongly in the spiritual dimension of architecture. “The problem of architecture has always been the same throughout time. Its authentic quality is reached through its proportions, and the proportions cost nothing. In fact, most of them are proportions among things, not the things themselves,” he said, adding, “Art is almost always a question of proportions.”14 Proportion can also be understood in broader terms as a relationship, for example between people and their built or natural environment. Wolf Tegethoff has written about the proportions in Mies’ buildings: “A demonstrable, calculable system of proportions underlying the plans – whether of a rational or geometrical nature – is […] in no single case apparent. […] Rather the suspicion arises that mathematical or geometrical correspondences in the ground plan were deliberately avoided, even when they appeared to be perfectly justified from a structural point of view.” 15 Tegethoff’s analysis, however, did not consider Mies’ early work. The recently discovered building records of the Warnholtz House include a ground floor plan that shows a salon measuring exactly 5 by 7.5 metres, a vestibule of 3 by 4 metres, a veranda of 4 by 5 metres and a library that is precisely 4 by 3 metres. These whole number proportions, which can also be seen in some of Mies’ other buildings, were also characteristic of the floor plans of the architect and designer Peter Behrens, in whose atelier Mies worked from 1908 to 1912 with the exception of a brief pause in between. Although Mies had previously learned his trade while working for Bruno Paul, Behrens would become a central figure for his development: “We were more Behrens-like than Behrens himself,”16 as he recalls. The clear proportions of Behrens’ rooms can be seen, for example, in his design for the Kröller-Müller House, which Mies also worked on; Mies was later commissioned to draw up a design of his own based on the same requirements. In the linear succession of representative spaces, from the dining room to the salon and from the hall to the gentleman’s study, the proportions of the rooms in Behrens’ design alternate between 3:4 and a square. The proportions of the hall, for example, can be seen by examining the position of the beams on the ceiling. Mies, however, was averse to designing perfectly square spaces, and he only found a legitimate case to do so for a freestanding pavilion with four identical façades that face in the four directions of the compass. Mies declared a dislike for the word design: “It means everything and nothing. Many believe they can do everything, from designing a comb to planning a railway station –, the result is that nothing is good.” He, on the other hand, was “only interested in building.”17 This opinion set him apart from his teachers Bruno Paul and Peter Behrens, both of whom were trained artists who had taken up architecture auto-didactically. They approached building not from the construction but from the form and the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Mies recalls that, “Behrens had a great sense of the great form. That was his main interest; and that I certainly understood and learned from him.” However, he was also critical: “It then became clear to me that it was not the task of architecture to invent form. I tried to understand what that task was. I asked Peter Behrens, but he could not give me an answer. He did not ask that question.” 18 This discrepancy was also the source of an altercation with a colleague in Bruno Paul’s office. “Later, we had a falling out, because I said that Bruno Paul was more of an interior designer than an architect. Our argument grew increasingly vocal. He mounted a full defence of Bruno Paul and I did precisely the opposite. I told him that what he did had nothing to do with architecture.”19 When asked to name architects that inspired him, Mies cited Karl Friedrich

Schinkel and Hendrik Petrus Berlage whose “honest” constructions he greatly admired. But Mies also designed furniture, some of it permanent fittings for the respective building, or else chairs and armchairs, which he patented. He designed showroom apartments and exhibitions, and also converted existing buildings, including an outbuilding in Potsdam 20 and a factory in Berlin-Steglitz for the Bauhaus School, which he headed at the time. Although this book does not document the entirety of Mies’ creative endeavours, it does bring a large part of his built oeuvre out of the shadows and back into the limelight. While Mies and his biographers portrayed his career as a linear path of development, it is in reality highly complex. Although he never saw himself as an urban designer, he often designed the spaces between groups of buildings. And while he strove to achieve buildings of great simplicity, the constructions this entailed were often exceptionally complex. Similarly, he had a very pragmatic attitude to the possibilities offered by new industrial production methods, but was at the same time firmly rooted in the traditions of classical architecture. He defined rules by which he worked and was highly disciplined about adhering to them, and at the same time produced a remarkably varied repertoire of solutions. And while his work can be clearly divided into a Euro­ pean and an American phase, many aspects of his early work often paved the way for what came later. In this book, I have attempted to explicitly identify these references to emphasise the coherence of his work: while his individual buildings may be stylistically different, they exhibit structural similarities. But what seems most contradictory today is the influence of Mies’ work on architectural production over the years, and the large number of soulless buildings that have resulted. While Mies expounded many principles, they were for him never more than a means of striving to reach a higher spiritual order. 1 Carsten Krohn (ed.), Das ungebaute Berlin (Unbuilt Berlin), Berlin 2010. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Graeme Shankland, in: The Listener, 15 Oct. 1959, p. 620. 3 Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 7. The sentence ends: “and some projects of the 1910–1914 period which were destroyed in the bombing of Berlin.” Nothing, however, is known of projects from this period that were destroyed. The Warnholtz House, built 1914–15, was only demolished in 1960. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Katharine Kuh, in: Saturday Review, 23 Jan. 1965, p. 22. 5 Almost all his buildings are shown in: Yehuda E. Safran, Mies van der Rohe, Lisbon 2000, but without floor plans. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Notes to Lectures”, 1950, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, p. 328. 7 For further information on the reception of the houses built between 1921 and 1926, see: Andreas Marx and Paul Weber, “Konventionelle Kontinuität – Mies van der Rohes Baumaßnahmen an Haus Urban 1924–26. Anlass zu einer Neuinterpretation seines konventionellen Werkes der 1920er Jahre”, in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten – Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung (Mies van der Rohe – Early Built Works: Problems in their conservation and ­a ssessment), Petersberg 2004, pp. 163–178. 8 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964, produced on a phonograph record: “Mies in Berlin”, Bauwelt. 9 He studied from June 1907 to May 1908 at the education department of the Berlin Museum of Applied Arts (Kunstgewerbemuseum) under Bruno Paul. See also Thomas Steigenberger, “Mies van der Rohe – ein Schüler Bruno Pauls?” in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten – Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung (Mies van der Rohe – Early Built Works: Problems in their conservation and assessment), Petersberg 2004, pp. 151–162. 10 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: John Peter, The Oral History of Modern Architecture. Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century, New York 1994, p. 156, 158. 11 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Katharine Kuh, in: ­Saturday Review, 23 Jan. 1965, p. 61. 12 Ibid., p. 23.

introduction

13

13 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in: Frühlicht, vol. 4, 1922, p. 124. 14 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Broadcasting), in: Der Architekt, 1966, p. 324. 15 Wolf Tegethoff, Mies van der Rohe – The Villas and Country Houses, New York 1985, pp. 77–78. 16 Stanford Anderson, “Considering Peter Behrens: Interviews with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Chicago, 1961) and Walter Gropius (Cambridge, Mass., 1964)”, in: Engramma, no. 100, Sep./Oct. 2012. www.engramma.it. 17 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Christian Norberg-­ Schulz, in: Éditions de l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, L’œuvre de Mies van der Rohe, Paris 1958, p. 100. 18 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Moisés Puentes (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, New York 2008, ­p. 54. 19 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Dirk Lohan, transcribed manuscript, Mies van der Rohe Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York (translated into English by JR). 20 Cf. Andreas Marx and Paul Weber, “Zur Neudatierung von Mies van der Rohes Landhaus in Eisenbeton”, in: Architectura, vol. 2, 2008, p. 160.

14 introduction

Riehl House Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1908

16

Although the house for a philosophy professor is situated in a col­ ony of villas in what is now Potsdam, Mies noted that “the house was not a villa. Rather, its character resembled the houses in the Märkische region, like those in Werder which have a simple pitched roof, a gable and a pair of dormers, usually of the eyebrow kind.”1 Despite the modest appearance of the building, the basic typology has been significantly modified and reinterpreted. Rather than arranging the long side parallel to the street, as is typical for this house type, the building is rotated by 90 degrees and turns away from the street, a gesture reinforced by the wall along the front. Mies introduced a large step in the terrain of the steep slop­ ing site to create a plinth on which the building stands, affording a view of the Griebnitzsee lake. Both parts, the house and the plinth, are fused to form a single structure. On entering the garden, one is immediately drawn into the architectural composition, as the upper terrace is already part of the constellation. Enclosed by a peri­meter wall, the garden has a cloister-like intimacy that continues into the interior of the building. In the centre of the house, Mies took the bold step at this early juncture in his career of creating a “general space”, a term that was used in a prominent publication of the day to denote a room with no specific function.2 In the book in question, such halls are described simply as the “central room of the house”, followed by a detailed elaboration of their composition: “Even in small houses halls always have a fire-place. Halls are furnished and their floors are carpeted. Wood panelling is the favourite treatment for walls, indeed it is considered the ideal dec­ oration. […] In all circumstances, the hall is not permitted to rise through two storeys […]. The floor may be composed of […] a hard wood. All-over carpeting is avoided […]. But there is always a deeppiled, warm rug in the centre and a thick one in front of the fire […]. [Where the staircase leads out of the hall], architects are ­reluctant to expose the whole flight to view and permit only the first few steps to be seen. […] In the […] country-house it is con­cealed because it leads only to the bedrooms, which are consider­ed to be private. […] There are certain pieces of furniture […] that re­appear in every kind of hall. These include a heavy hall-table and a settle. […] English round gate-legged tables are very popular as hall-­ tables. […] In smaller halls, there will be merely sev­eral wooden chairs and a wooden settle.”3 Mies’ use of a “general space” of the kind described here by Hermann Muthesius does not necessarily imply that he was aware of this text, or that it was a creation of his own devices: by then this arrangement had become an established pattern – a typology of sorts. Although this central space was rather austere, especially when the doors were closed, it was also spacious, a quality that Muthesius deemed characteristic for this type of room. By arranging the space so that it opens directly onto the loggia with a panoramic view of the lake and the woodland beyond, the hall is transformed into an architectural set-piece. On entering the room, visitors initially face the stairs, but a change in direction toward the light ensures that one only sees the first few steps. A door on the landing signals unequivocally that what lies behind is private. The floor plan of the house is organised in such a way that, when the doors are open, one can see outside from this central hall in several directions. A company of guests seated at the din­ ing table would each have a view outdoors wherever they sat, and all the visual axes cross in a star-shape at the centre of the room. All of this lends the building as a whole an extremely open impression. Two alcoves adjoining the hall can be separated off by curtains, creating different situations: one more intimate and one more open. The same opposition can also be seen in the different faces of the house: the introverted side facing the street and the extroverted side facing the private garden.

Ground floor plan

Views from the street

17

Later alterations to the building The house was renovated in 2001.4 The garden wall, balcony, flat tile roofing and chimney are all reconstructions. The enclosure of the loggia with perimeter glazing, which had been undertaken at an earlier date, was retained and the original condition was not reinstated. The original enclosed staircase and dumb waiter was replaced with an open staircase and the entrance door was changed. Most of the original fittings, with the exception of a few elements in the attic, have also been lost. As the original planning records and working drawings no longer exist and the published plans are idealised plans that differ from the building survey, it is not possible to conclusively determine the original plans of the lower floor and attic. The building as seen from the present This “general space” that Mies created right at the beginning of his career marks the first use of what Mies would later term “universal space”: an architecture independent of a specific function. As he explained, “I have always liked large rooms in which I can do as I please […]. I said: ‘Make your spaces big enough, man, so that you can walk around in them freely, and not just in one predetermined direction!’ […] We don’t know at all whether people will do with them what we expect them to. Functions are not so clear or so constant; they change faster than the building.”5 Mies had evidently wished to achieve precisely this spatial constellation and precisely these proportions. The ratio of the width to length of the hall is 2:3, as is the ratio of the height to width. The alcoves adjoining the hall have the same proportions, as does the entrance vestibule and the windows and opening onto the loggia. From his later buildings, we know that Mies never left the proportions to chance, declaring that “the artistic expresses itself in the proportions”.6 His floor plan, however, could only be achieved with considerable constructional effort, as the spatial disposition conflicted with the structure of the building. The dimensions and orientation of the hall could only be achieved without the use of columns by employing a concealed supporting construction. Hidden columns bear a hidden I-beam on which the transverse gable wall of the upper storey rests. This expensive supplementary construction shows how far Mies was from his later ideal of structural clarity. But it also shows how uncompromisingly he wished to realise this particular plan within the confines of this unassuming building type. The Riehl House can also be analysed according to Gottfried Semper’s theory of the four elements of architecture. In the nineteenth century, Semper characterised architecture according to four primordial elements – hearth, roof, enclosure and mound – each of which he related to a specific material. In the Riehl House, the hearth is related to the materials metal and ceramics out of which the “fireplace” is made. Although this is actually just a radiator screen, its altar-like treatment and placement lend it the status of a fireplace. With regard to the enclosure, Semper noted that “the word Wand [wall] has the same root as Gewand [garment]. They describe the textile or fabric of the walls that clothe the space.”7 Even when walls were later made of masonry, panelled with wood or clad with sheets of marble, Semper argued that they still represented a non-structural enclosure that derived from the textile fabric of old. Although only visible in the tectonic articulation, and only hinted at discreetly, the principle of the sep­­ aration of structure from non-structural infill is visible in the fine profiling of the pilasters of the façade. On the garden frontage, these infill panels are actually omitted in a manner akin to a halftimbered structure. Finally, this elemental approach to the building design is most apparent in its relationship to the topography: the building is firmly anchored with the site by a substantial mound.

18

1 From a conversation with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the documentary film “Mies van der Rohe” by Georgia van der Rohe, 1986. 2 Hermann Muthesius, Das Englische Haus, Berlin 1904, vol. 3 (English-language edition: Hermann Muthesius, The English House. Volume III: The Interior, London 2007). 3 Ibid., pp. 170–173. 4 The house was renovated by the architects Heiko Folkerts together with conservation consulting from Jörg Limberg. See the contribution by Folkerts and Limberg in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten – Probleme der Erhaltung – Probleme der Bewertung, Petersberg 2004, pp. 27–55. 5 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964, produced on a phonograph record, Mies in Berlin, Bauwelt, Berlin 1966. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Manuscript of a “radio broadcast” on 17 Aug. 1931, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 311. 7 Gottfried Semper, Die vier Elemente der Baukunst, Braunschweig 1851, p. 57 (The Four Elements of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass. 2011).

Bird‘s eye view

riehl House

19

Perls House Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany, 1911–12

Although the house takes the form of a decidedly compact block, its design is dictated by a desire to relate the interior to the garden. The straightforward and unassuming impression one has of the building from the street belies the complexity of the circulation within and the many-layered system of visual axes that connect the indoors with outdoors. A curved recess in the garden fence serves as an inviting gesture, drawing the visitor through the gate and directing them toward the asymmetrically placed entrance to the house. Although the entrance vestibule is located in the corner of the building – like the house itself in the north corner of the site –, one has views from this first room in all directions. Several visual axes pass through the house and cross at the point where the visitor’s route into the house divides, one way leading on to the representative rooms, the other to the private areas. When the doors are open, one has a view from this point in the entrance hall of the entire ground floor with views beyond into the garden. Adjoining the study of the house’s owner, a lawyer and art collector, is the central dining room with a long room for making music beyond. In the plan, a further rounded element, the bottom step of the stairs, serves as a similar inviting gesture encouraging people to move through the house. Mies, then 25 years of age and working in Peter Behren’s architecture office, told the client, who was the same age as him, that, “The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows. Of course, in addition to the wishes of the client, the position, orientation and size of the plot also play an important role in determin­ ing the final plan of the house. The ‘where’ and ‘how’ of the exterior then follows naturally from all of that.”1 As the building was to house a collection of artworks, the rooms of the ground floor have a representative character while the bedrooms and child’s room, as well as the bathroom, closet and guest rooms, are located on the upper floor. The lower ground, which opens onto a narrow yard to the north, houses the kitchen, washroom and a “maid’s room”. Thanks to a steep slope, the two-storey building appears as if it has three storeys on the north side. The clear proportions of the rooms in the interior are reflected in the outdoor areas. The ratio of length to height of the house corresponds to the Golden Section, echoing Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum. Two different gardens, each the same width as the house, are related directly to the building. The first of these is enclosed on three sides by a plant-covered wooden pergola and reached directly from the loggia, itself a transitional zone extending deep into the building. The second part of the garden, a sunken rectangular court, also relates directly to the façade. Five floor-to-ceiling French windows open extrovertly onto the garden presenting a panoramic view of the surroundings. A single step leads from the house into the garden, and from there a small stair on into the sunken garden terrace. A figurative sculpture was placed in the garden, its position – as marked in the plans of the garden – aligning with the main axis of the house. The sculpture marks the end of this axis and helps to maximise the spacious impression of this otherwise modest-sized house. Later alterations to the building The house as it exists today represents a partial reconstruction ­after significant alterations had been made. The landscaping of the garden was lost and has not been reinstated by the current owner, an anthroposophical school. The house first changed hands not long after its completion. Hugo Perls, a lawyer, art historian and later a Plato scholar, gave the house in exchange for five paintings by Max Liebermann to Eduard Fuchs, a founder member of the communist party and also an art collector. Between 1927 and 1928, Fuchs added a gallery wing, also designed by Mies, but was forced to flee Germany five years later when his house, along with his

20

First floor plan Ground floor plan View from the garden

Garden façade

21

22

Loggia from the garden Loggia

notable collection of erotic art, was seized by the SS. After years of dereliction, the house was converted under the direction of Albert Speer into a secret facility for the production of instruments and gauges for retaliatory weapons (V-rockets). After the war, the company continued to flourish producing technical medical equipment from the house until the end of the 1970s. The windows and doors were changed and the loggia was closed off. Extensions were built, encasing the original building like a second skin. A single photograph remains of the house directly after its completion showing an idealised view from a perspective that matched Mies’ own presentation drawings and echoed those of Schinkel. Dietrich von Beulwitz, who was entrusted with the ren­ ovation, relied heavily on recollections of the building by Philip Johnson, who had studied the building intensively before the alterations were undertaken and was able to describe the original tones of colour used.2 Von Beulwitz described the difficulties he had because “modern plaster and paint, all industrial products, are quite different from the old materials.” The building was originally rendered with a “plaster of slaked lime” and “a lime paint put on ‘al fresco’ and combining with the plaster, rubbing off slightly over the course of time and giving a particularly lively effect.”3

that provide an indication of the original condition of the building. For further information on the renovation, see: Dietrich von Beulwitz, “The Perls House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe” in: Architectural Design, vol. 11/12, 1983. 3 Ibid, p. 63. 4 Cf. Philip Johnson 1947, p. 14; Blake 1960, p. 160; Spaeth 1985, p. 22. 5 Fritz Neumeyer, “Space for Reflection: Block versus Pavilion”, in: Franz Schulze (ed.), Mies van der Rohe – Critical Essays, New York 1989, pp. 164–165.

The building as seen from the present The entire design hinges around the position of the dining table in the geometric centre of the house. It is at this central point that the two primary axes that connect the house and garden intersect at right angles to one another, and where other, diagonal sight lines cross before continuing on into the greenery outside. This star-shaped constellation of axes affords a panoramic view of the natural surroundings, uniting indoor and outdoor space in a single spatial concept. The compact form of the house exhibits a sparing sobriety and geometric rigour that is also to be found in the proportion of the rooms. The central room around the din­ ing table has the proportions 2:3, extending to become almost a square when the windows to the loggia are opened. This tension between the building’s geometric precision and expansive sense of space informs the character of the building. After a long period in which the house was accorded little attention by scholars of Mies, with the exception of repeated refer­ ences to the influence of Schinkel,4 it was eventually recognised as containing early indications of characteristics that were to develop in Mies’ later work. For Fritz Neumeyer, one particular detail reveals one of Mies’ central themes: the expression of a clear and rational construction. Slots, one centimetre thick, are cut into the side walls of the loggia, articulating the corners visually as loadbearing columns. “This small detail indicates the autonomy of the tectonic skeleton,”5 argued Neumeyer, introducing a further interpretation of the building: the loggia could be read as a pergola that has been inserted into the building. The loggia has a pivotal function. As a transitional space, it links indoors with outdoors. It is part of the house when seen as an extension of the interior, and part of the garden when regarded as a continuation of the pergola that encompasses the outdoor space. The transition between indoors and outdoors is articulated both through the precise placement of the openings as well as the continuous step from the music room to the garden. Although very discreet, this detail, in combination with the other steps leading down to the sunken court with the sculpture, lends the passage of movement a noticeable sense of descent. This in turn creates the impression that the house rests on a raised podium. In his later works, Mies also positioned sculptures outdoors in such a way that they relate to the interior, heightening its impression of space. 1 As recalled by Hugo Perls in: Warum ist Kamilla schön? Von Kunst, Künstlern und Kunsthandel, Munich 1962, p. 16. 2 Von Beulwitz assembled a collection of all the documents he could find

perls Ho u se

23

Kröller-Müller House, Façade Mock-up Wassenaar, Netherlands, 1912–13 destroyed

1

2

4

3

8

5

6

1 Vestibule 2 Hall 3 Dining room 4 Corridor 5 Pergola 6 Water basin 7 Lady’s living quarters 8 Gallery 9 Garden with small pond 10 Greenhouse

24

Elevation Ground floor plan

7

9

10

On a coastal site on the Dutch North Sea coast, a full-scale mockup of the façades of a house, constructed of painted sailcloth over wood framing, was erected in winter 1912/13 between the dunes and woods. The only known photograph of the installation was published 15 years later in an article, accompanied by the note: “Mies was quite right when he remarked on this project that if one were to remove the detailing of the façade, one would have a building very much like those he makes today. That is, a building in which living is not dictated by the arrangement of the house, but the arrangement of the house follows the process of living.”1 The original floor plan no longer exists, but Mies later sketched a sequence of some of the spaces from memory. 2 He placed the entrance at the corner of the H-shaped plan of the building. Visitors pass through a vestibule into a representative hall from which a path leads to the dining room and a long passage to a second wing with a large exhibition gallery. In this second wing on the far side, a hall also serves as a vestibule distributing the visitors in all directions. The lady of the house, Helene Kröller-Müller, had specific ideas of her own for a monumental country house. To exhibit their collection of paintings, a windowless hall was required that she wanted placed near to her own room.3 The organisation of the programme of spaces was complex as the different functional areas needed to be independent of one another but still be incorporated into an overall composition. The different areas included a succession of reception rooms for entertaining, the private residence of the couple, a service wing for the servants as well as semi-public areas for the art collection. This programme of spaces, representing the different living processes, was recorded by Peter Behrens, who was originally commissioned to undertake the project. His design was also tested on site as a fullscale model but was ultimately turned down. Mies worked at the time as Behrens’ assistant and was able to establish a good work­ ing relationship with the clients. Mies was then asked to develop a design of his own for the house, which in turn marked the end of his collaboration with Behrens. In Behrens’ earlier project, visitors were also led via a vestibule into a hall from which a corridor continued onto the far wing with the windowless gallery space. The living room, “in which the family usually dined, as is typical in Holland,”4 is axially aligned with a pool of water in front of it while the dining room was used only for special events or entertaining guests. The wing with the succession of reception rooms is divided into two linear zones, one for the service functions and one for the served rooms. The kitchen was situated on the upper storey. Fritz Hoeber wrote of the lady’s rooms: “The square of the gentleman’s room at one end corresponds to a large vestibule at the other end from which the lady’s personal living quarters can be reached. Her living room, replete with a special wardrobe, can only be reached through this room; there is no door directly from the hallway. And to continue this analogy with a monastic cell, the lady’s living room has its own private garden, its ‘giardino secreto’ in an intimate courtyard whose short sides are flanked by freestanding columns, affording an expansive view from the windows of her room while still providing a sense of enclosure.” 5 Mies carried over this arrangement of the garden into his own project, flanking it with a greenhouse, and likewise attributing it to the lady’s quarters.6 He heightened its sense of intimacy by making only one room open onto the garden. We know from rec­ ords that Helene Kröller-Müller had found Behrens’ architecture to be lacking in intimacy. 7 One can only speculate as to why Mies’ design was eventually rejected. While Mies was developing his design, Hendrik Petrus Berlage was also commissioned to draw up a second design. The Kröller-Müllers consulted their artistic advisor, who is reported to have said of Berlage’s project, “that is art,” and of Mies’,

25

26

Elevation Upper floor plan

“that is not.” However, Berlage’s project also never came to fruition. Mies even went to Paris to solicit a critique of his own design from the art critic Julius Meier-Graefe, who wrote in praise of the “handsome asymmetrical arrangement” of the complex, declaring: “Nothing is piecemeal. All the parts hang together and are developed logically.” 8 Later alterations to the building The 1:1 model of the house was set up on a system of rails so that it could be moved about. “Everything inside – the partitions and the ceilings – could move up and down,”9 recalled Mies, noting in retrospect that it could be dangerous to erect a house as a model. The building as seen from the present In his use of the term “dangerous”, Mies was probably referring to the fact that there is more to building than erecting a life-size impression of its form. Even when one can experience its spatial characteristics, it lacks all materiality and the specifics of its construction, as well as a connection with the place. Rem Koolhaas on the other hand has written in S,M,L,XL: “I suddenly saw him inside the colossal volume, a cubic tent vastly lighter and more suggestive than the sombre and classical architecture it attempted to embody. I guessed – almost with envy – that this strange ‘enactment’ of a future house had drastically changed him: were its whiteness and weightlessness an overwhelming revelation of everything he did not yet believe in? An epiphany of anti-matter? Was this canvas cathedral an acute flash-forward to another architecture?”10 The development of Mies’ work would nevertheless display an evolutionary continuity for a long time to come. Leaving aside the rigorous classical arrangement of the façades, the way in which the secondary volumes interlock “organically” with the primary block-like building volume already hints at his later work. Mies would later say of this project: “Certainly I was influenced by Schinkel, but the plan is not in any way Schinkel’s.”11 A water basin was to be placed in front of the expansive complex in which the architecture would be reflected, a situation comparable to that seen in the Barcelona Pavilion, for here too a sec­ ond smaller pool was planned within a more intimate en­closed courtyard to reflect a sculptural figure. A smaller model was also constructed of Mies’ project but in a modified form. In this model, the intimate courtyard with the smaller pool and a sculpture on a round plinth is open on the other side. The central space, which corresponds to the lady’s room in Behrens’ project, no longer has three large French windows opening onto the garden but is now puzzlingly entirely enclosed and is marked as a gallery for engravings.12 1 Paul Westheim, “Mies van der Rohe – Entwicklung eines Architekten”, in: Das Kunstblatt, vol. 2, 1927, p. 56. 2 Sketch of the Ground floor plan from around 1931. Published in: Barry Bergdoll and Terence Riley (eds.), Mies in Berlin. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Die Berliner Jahre 1907–1938, Munich 2001, p. 166. 3 Cf. Sergio Polano, “Rose-shaped, Like an Open Hand. Helene KröllerMüller’s House”, in: Rassegna, Dec. 1993, p. 23. 4 Fritz Hoeber, Peter Behrens, Munich 1913, p. 201. 5 Ibid., pp. 201–202. 6 Cf. Mies’ legend “House of flowers for the lady”. 7 Cf. note 3. 8 The letter from Julius Meier-Graefe can be found in the MoMA Archives. Cited in: Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe – A Critical Biography, Chicago 2012, pp. 41–42. 9 Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Henry Thomas Cadbury-Brown in: Architectural Association Journal, July/Aug. 1959, p. 29. 10 Rem Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL, Rotterdam 1995, p. 63. 11 Cf. note 9, p. 28. 12 Cf. note 2.

K rö ller-M üller Ho u se , Fa ça de M o ck - up

27

Werner House Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany, 1912–13

On a site directly adjacent to the Perls House, Mies designed a second L-shaped building made up of a constellation of differ­ ent building volumes. The building is placed at the north end of a large site, turning its back on its neighbour to the north, while the southern part of the site is kept free for use as a vegetable garden. As with the earlier houses for Riehl and Perls, the façade facing the garden is more open and monumental than the street elevation and features a central frontal projection emphasising the symmetry of the garden elevation. From the north, by contrast, one sees only a wall that conceals the service yard and the windows closest to the street are the kitchen windows. With this gesture the house turns away from the street and opens onto the private outdoor areas. Stylistically, the stuccoed building with a large mansard roof follows a regional building pattern reminiscent of that used by ­Alfred Messel for similar buildings, as and described by Paul ­Mebes in his book Um 1800.1 This stylistic direction emphasises simplicity over the prestige of classicism. The plan of the house ­bears­­similarity to that of Peter Behrens’ Wiegand House, especially the pergola that extends out into the garden, but its character is less monumental: its dimensions are more modest and the atmosphere more intimate. The path from the street to the main entrance ascends a couple of steps to a raised podium. All these elements – the path, steps and podium – are paved with brick. From the entrance, the path through the house does not lead in a straight line to the garden but towards a radiator concealed by a radiator screen that shares the same detailing as those in the Perls House, with alternating square-section and round-section bars that have been given a slight entasis much like classical columns. Elsewhere, the decorative details have been handled sparingly, with just the suggestion of a capital on the columns of the pergola and a heavily ab­ stracted eaves cornice detail. On stepping out into the garden, one enters a further architectonically defined space. Here the commingling of architecture and the plot’s topography is more strongly articulated than in Mies’ earlier buildings. In this L-shaped complex, the architecture and the garden are likewise conceived as a whole. Like the Perls House next door, the house opens onto a sunken garden area except that here it is enclosed by a walkway, which takes the form of a colonnaded structure. In his earlier design for the Kröller-Müller House, Mies describes a similar construction as a “pergola”, however these are less like open structures than roofed-over sections of the building complex. The garden at the rear – a terrace with rough-hewn stone paving – is accessed, like in the Wiegand House, via three French doors in the central, axially-arranged room, as well as from the neighbouring dining room that opens directly onto the pergola. Again echoing the arrangement of the Wiegand House, the garden is divided into different conceptual areas: a formal, geo­ metrically defined area that relates directly to the architecture, and a landscaped garden area. The path through the architecture is articulated to provide framed views and leads up two sets of stone steps to a wooded area from which one has a view of the entire ensemble. Later alterations to the building The addition of a later extension over the former service yard alter­ed the appearance of the building ensemble. Built in the 1920s, the extension continues the formal language of the building but changes its shape. The garden has also been changed: the straight rear retaining wall has been replaced by a wall with a semi-circular recess.2 The pool of water in the lower section is likewise a later addition, replacing a bed of herbaceous plants. The pergola has also been lengthened to accommodate a wheelchair access ramp and a school now uses the building.

28

Ground floor plan

Garden Stairs in the garden

29

The building as seen from the present Although the reconstruction replicates just the gesture of an outstretched arm enclosing the garden, and does not follow Mies’ original concept, it still allows us to experience the unity of build­ ing and garden in Mies’ work more powerfully than any other of his early works, and one can still sense the intimacy of the atmosphere. While the topography of the garden is “constructed” as a series of plateaus connected by steps, the building has in turn become overgrown. Before Mies’ next building – the Warnholtz House – was discovered by historians, the Werner House was held to be an isolated exception in his oeuvre of works, so much so that his authorship was called into question.3 But it is less the formal and stylistic language that makes this building notable than the structural concept of the ensemble. Mies’ design builds on an established build­ ing type, and he would later declare the idea of the simple and self-evident to be an ideal, but what makes this building relevant is its definition of space through the volume of the building. The right-angular form creates a protected courtyard situation, a principle that Mies also employed for the design of his own house, al­ though this was never built. In his later addition to the Perls House he would likewise create an L-shaped situation, demonstrating that the pattern of living does not have to follow the arrangement of the house but vice versa. But Mies had not dispensed with the simplicity and rigour of his clearly proportioned rectangular floor plans. The different floor plans of the Perls House and the Werner House represent two conceptual poles between which he would experiment in his future work. In retrospect, his entire European oeuvre can be seen as an attempt to bring contrasting conceptions into harmonious balance. Of this period he would later say, “After my time in Holland, an inner battle ensued in which I tried to free myself from the influence of Schinkelesque classicism.”4 The origins of the L-shaped arrangement go back to the Kröller-Müller project. In Behrens’ earlier design for the building, which Mies had worked on, the lady’s quarters were connected to an intimate garden, a concept that Mies also carried over for his own design for that house and finally put into practice in a similar form here in the Werner House. 1 Paul Mebes, Um 1800, Munich 1908. In a conversation with Dirk Lohan, Mies cites Alfred Messel’s Villa Oppenheim in Berlin as one of his inspirations. Documented in a manuscript in the Mies Archives of the MoMA, New York. 2 For further information on the design of the garden, see Christiane Kruse, Garten, Natur und Landschaftsprospekt – Zur ästhetischen Inszenierung des Außenraums in den Landhausanlagen Mies van der Rohes, Dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin 1994. 3 The plans of the house are signed only by Ferdinand Goebbels, who was Mies’ partner and was also involved in executing the Perls House. Since then a further plan signed by Mies has been discovered. See also Christiane Kruse, “Haus Werner – Ein ungeliebtes Frühwerk Mies van der Rohes”, in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1993, pp. 554–563. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964, produced on a phonograph record, “Mies in Berlin”, Bauwelt, Berlin 1966.

30

Pergola Stairs to entrance Radiator screen

Garden façade

Werner Ho u se

31

Warnholtz HOUSE Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, 1914–15 destroyed

This house on the Heerstraße, which was only attributed to Mies in 20011, continues the formal language of the Werner House. Visitors pass by the shortest possible path through the house along a central axis. A central salon is flanked to the west by a music room and dining room, and to the east by a library and study. The clear proportions of the rooms are a product of their round dimensions: the salon measures exactly 5 by 7.50 metres, the entrance 3 by 4 metres, the closed veranda to the west 4 by 5 metres and the li­ br­a­­­ry 4 by 3 metres.2 A second transverse axis offers views perpendicular to the main axis, creating a maximum sense of breadth. Mies’ declared admiration for Alfred Messel, and for his design of the Oppenheim House in particular, can be seen in the detailing of the façade as well as the design of the open veranda. The house was demolished around 1960 and the garden destroyed. 1 Markus Jager, “Das Haus Warnholtz von Mies van der Rohe (1914/15)”, in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2002, pp. 123–136. The design of the garden has been reconstructed from historical aerial photographs. With thanks to Markus Jager for his valuable input. 2 These dimensions are given in the building records at the Berlin Landesarchiv.

32

Elevation Ground floor plan

urbig House Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1915–17

The design for this villa exploits the topography of the sloping site on the banks of Griebnitzsee lake in such a way that it presents two storeys on one side and three on the other. As with the Warnholtz House, a succession of stairs leads from the living area via a terrace down to the garden. A further open staircase next to the house leads to a small seating area. The terrace is articulated as a podium and appears to extend through the entire house, reappearing on the street elevation as a large travertine step and giving the impression that the house rests on a plinth. The travertine paving of the terrace has since been reconstructed, as have the balustrades, window shutters and garden fence. The access to the lower storey has also been changed. The boathouse was demolished in 1961 when the Berlin wall was built, which passed through the garden.1 1 Further information on the history of its use and restoration, see: Winfried Brenne, “Haus Urbig, Neubabelsberg. Baugeschichte und Wiederherstellung”, in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten. Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung, Petersberg 2004, ­pp. 62–70; as well as: Claudia Hain, Villa Urbig 1915–1917 – Zur Geschichte und Architektur des bürgerlichen Wohnhauses für den Bankdirektor Franz Urbig –­Ein frühes Werk von Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in PotsdamBabelsberg, Berlin 2009, private print. This contains a print of the plan of the boathouse signed by Mies.

Ground floor plan

33

34 Urb i g H o u se

Street façade Garden façade Outdoor stairs

First floor plan

Tombstone for Laura Perls Berlin-Weißensee, Germany, 1919

The tombstone stands in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee.1 Mies designed it for Laura Perls, the mother of Mies’ second client. The meticulously fitted blocks of stone are made of shell ­limestone – not any ordinary limestone, but valuable core rock with an especially dense structure of the type used in the past for sculptures. The surface structure of the stone at the base of the tomb shows that it has been cut against the grain while the stone above has been cut with the grain. The precious material is placed as a block in space, its plain but monumental form expressed simply through the clarity with which the blocks are precisely assembled. The proportion of its height to length is exactly 3:4. 1 Berlin Heritage Authority and Berlin Technical University (eds.), 115,628 Berliners – The Weißensee Jewish Cemetery – Documentation of the Comprehensive Survey of the Burial Sites, Berlin 2013, p. 54.

Tombstone

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Kempner House Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, 1921–23 destroyed

36

Elevation Ground floor plan

The building is placed in the far northeast corner of the plot. The house consists of a series of different wings adjoining a main vol­ ume. Two service wings containing the servants’ quarters and the kitchens are placed to the east of a firewall and together enclose a courtyard. The building records document that Mies skilfully negotiated the placement of the building closer to the boundary of the plot than was actually allowed,1 arguing that this was the only way to preserve the mature trees on the site. The ground floor plan is a complex configuration that organises the representative needs of the owners and the functions of the servants. The plan can be read as a diagram with a dividing line between the “serving” and the “served” spaces. The rooms of the man of the house were also separate from those of his spouse. While the gentleman’s room with bay and fireplace forms the north­ ernmost of the succession of representative spaces, which could be connected or divided by sliding doors, the lady of the house resided on the first floor with access to the roof terrace. A second roof terrace is arranged on top of the L-shaped kitchen wing.2 The approach to the house is not organised around a central axis, but rather from the side via a somewhat inconspicuous entrance. Visitors enter the site in the northwest corner and walk along a long pre-existing wall towards a service wing before, after a couple of steps, turning through 90 degrees to enter the house. Upon entering, the visitor sees a succession of rooms extending the entire length of the house to the garden. As with Mies’ later designs for the Lange and Esters Houses in Krefeld, the build­ ing transitions into the garden via a paved terrace in the terrain. The floor plan shown before does not reflect what was actually built but an earlier design that was altered several times dur­ ing construction.3 In those plans the door to the service wing is shown directly on axis with the path that visitors take as they approach the house. They would then have walked directly towards this ancillary door, a situation that Mies obviously saw as an error as he later replaced this door with a window into the service wing and repositioned the service door next to the main entrance. The linear path through the house leads from the entrance to the veranda, which is open on one side and has a window on the other. The placement of the glazing between two outdoor areas is a somewhat unusual solution but one that Mies also uses in the houses for the Riehl, Urbig, Esters and Lange families. This provides a framed view of the landscape while still being able to sit outdoors protected from the elements. The result is a sheltered space, an intermediary zone that is at once part of the house as well as part of the garden. Although stylistically different, the Kempner House and the later Esters House employ the same structural sequence of spaces from the dining room via a half-open covered veranda that effects a 90 degrees turn before descending via a flight of steps into the garden. The house has a pronounced Dutch character. The building is made of brick laid in Dutch bond with a stepped gable over the service wing. Even the raised pointing of the brickwork is Dutch in origin. Mies recounts that he was heavily influenced by the work of the Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage. This house, with its complex asymmetric, staggered arrangement of different building volumes with bays and tall chimneys, is in spirit closer to Berlage than the Berlin tradition in the vein of Schinkel. The col­ oured glazing in the vertical windows of the staircase and the woven patterning of the floor tiles are likewise similar in character to Berlage’s architecture. Later alterations to the building The house was planted with creepers that spread across the entire courtyard façade within a few years. During the war it suffered heavy damage and the remains of the building were dismantled in the early 1950s. Today the site houses the Department of Mathematics of the Technical University of Berlin.

First floor plan

37

38

Elevation

The building as seen from the present In the period between designing the Kempner House and the Urbig House that preceded it, Mies’ life and work was affected by historical events that not only brought about major political turbulences but also redirected the development of architecture as a whole. Mies was conscripted to serve in the First World War, and on his return he, like many of his contemporaries, drew up visionary designs that heralded a transformation in architecture and in society. As with almost all of Mies’ early buildings, the Kempner House was not published in the press at the time. The appearance of the house remained unknown until the mid-1980s when the building records of the house were discovered. A design drawing was published in Philip Johnson’s monograph of Mies‘ work, but the actual building differed in its form. In his foreword Johnson explains that only those buildings that were not built according to Mies’ guidelines were not published. The five avant-garde projects in the book – the two glass skyscrapers, an office building, a concrete country house and a brick country house – have therefore overshadowed the Kempner House to the present day, although it is from the same period. Attempts to explain this discrepancy between the unbuilt “modern” works and the “conventional” built projects as breadand-butter work, or the assumption that Mies succumbed to the conservative tastes of his clients are not borne out by Mies’ own luxurious lifestyle and his famously uncompromising standpoint in his dealings with clients.4 Years later, Mies also showed the house to the Tugendhat family before obtaining the commission. Compared with the Feldmann House built at the same time, the ground floor plan of the Kempner House is positively labyrinthine. In retrospect, one can see that Mies’ work at this time in the early 1920s fluctuated between two divergent concepts of space. While the classical solution of the Feldmann House employs a central axis of symmetry and is extremely clearly organised, this house reflects the complex spatial relationships that prevail in stately house with live-in servants. Mies would later call this complex way of organising space an “organic principle of order”,5 but for a long time he was undecided and kept switching between a “classical” and an “organic” arrangement of rooms. 1 See the building records for Sophienstraße 5–7 in the Berlin State Arch­ives: B Rep. 207 no. 1608. 2 Immediately on entering the house, one finds a coatroom and toilet to the left while the private rooms of the house’s owner – the Privy Councillor Maximilian Kempner – are on the right. The path leads straight ahead from the entrance through a central hall and stairway to the dining room and veranda beyond. Adjoining the dining room is the living room, which opens on to the terrace, as well as a serving area that can be reached directly from the kitchen. A second service wing with its own living quarters and kitchen for the servants is reached via a separate entrance. A stair leads up to the sleeping quarters. The bedrooms of the owner and his wife Franziska Kempner and their son as well as the “lady’s living quarters” are arranged on the first floor. 3 The floor plan is published in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 85. The most comprehensive study of this house can be found in: Andreas Marx and Paul Weber, “Konventioneller Kontext der Moderne – Mies van der Rohes Haus Kempner 1921–23 – Ausgangspunkt einer Neubewertung des Hochhauses Friedrichstraße”, in: Berlin in Geschichte und Gegenwart – Jahrbuch des Landesarchivs Berlin, Berlin 2003, pp. 65–107. The floor plans published here also do not correspond to what was actually built. 4 Cf. Andreas Marx and Paul Weber, “Konventionelle Kontinuität – Mies van der Rohes Baumaßnahmen an Haus Urban 1924–26. Anlass zu einer­ Neu­interpretation seines konventionellen Werkes der 1920er Jahre”, in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten – Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung, Petersberg 2004, pp. 163–178. 5 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe “Inaugural address”, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 317.

kempner house

39

Eichstaedt House Berlin-Nikolassee, Germany, 1921–23

A series of different spaces adjoin the almost square-plan house and serve as a transition between indoors and outdoors, or make it possible to experience the world outdoors from within: a round bay separated from the interior by a step, a banked terrace with adjacent veranda and a projecting entrance vestibule. In the preliminary design, this projection was not present but its later addition made it possible to make the entrance area more spacious. This entrance leads via a hallway to the stairs, the living room and the dining room, separated off by a curtain, while the pathway through the building always leads towards the light. Two glazed doors and a strip of windows illuminate the dining room. The kitchen and pantry lie in the northwest part of the house. Although the site does not directly adjoin the lake, 150 metres away, it opens onto woodland to the south. The house has experienced successive alterations: an extension was added to the west, the veranda closed off and the front porch extended.1 1 The planning application and later alterations are documented in the building records for “Dreilindenstraße 30” held at Bau- und Wohnungs­ aufsichtsamt Zehlendorf (Building Control and Housing Department).

40

First floor plan Ground floor plan

View from the garden

Feldmann House Berlin-Grunewald, Germany, 1921–23 destroyed

This house is very clearly organised. The main volume of the build­ ing has a symmetrical arrangement with the entrance in the central axis. A linear path runs through the house to the garden and is crossed by a transverse axis forming a second visual axis. The liv­ ing room to the west and the dining room to the east are exactly 6 by 9 metres and have straightforward proportions. The hallway between them measures 3 by 6 metres and the main part of the building 11.14 by 22.26 metres. The central staircase with curved steps is placed like an object in the space of the entrance hall. Ancillary spaces such as the cloakroom, servant’s staircase and entrance to the service wing and kitchen are placed to the right, with the study to the left of the entrance hall. The building was badly damaged during the war and rebuilt with alterations. However, the core remained intact for over 80 years before it was demolished.1 1 The building records are available from the Bau- und Wohnungs­ aufsichtsamt Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (Building Control and Housing Department).

Elevation First floor plan Ground floor plan

41

Ryder House Wiesbaden, Germany, 1923–27

The plan of the house is very similar to that of the Riehl House. In contrast to the earlier house, however, the staircase is not placed out of sight. Instead visitors walk directly towards it on entering the house. On the upper floor, diagonal sight lines afford a view of the large windows which turn the corner of the building. “Schöne Aussicht” (pleasant vista) is not only the name of the street – one of the most prestigious in Wiesbaden – but also the theme of the architecture. A glazed conservatory on one side of the house with a large terrace on its flat roof made the most of its dramatic situation overlooking the city. The house has since been changed beyond recognition. The façades have been remodelled and a hipped roof was added in the 1980s. Today, only isolated elements of the original architecture still exist.1 1 This project was undertaken jointly with Gerhard Severain. The history of the house is described in: Dietrich Neumann, “Das Haus Ryder in Wiesbaden (1923) und die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Ludwig Mies van der Rohe und Gerhard Severain”, in: Architectura, vol. 36, 2006, pp. 199–222.

42

Elevation First floor plan Ground floor plan

Balcony

Gymnasium for Frau Butte’s Private School Potsdam, Germany, 1924–25

The gymnasium is an addition to an existing school building. The building is entered via a projecting porch that houses a couple of steps leading down into the gymnasium.1 The floor plan has a clear structure. The room is illuminated by a series of tall windows. Cornices lend the exterior an austere and classical impression. Although reminiscent of historical architecture, the construction is entirely modern. As with the industrial buildings by Peter Behrens, a monumental façade design encloses an open interior cov­ered by a delicate steel roof construction. The building has undergone significant alterations. Two storeys were added and a new level introduced within the interior. The cornices of the façade were removed and replaced with a scraped render. Only the windows have been reconstructed as they once were. 1 The ground floor plan of the building as originally built (dated 28 Aug. 1925) is available from the Conservation Department in Potsdam building record “SvPAD, Acta specialia Helene-Lange-Straße 14”.

Elevation Floor plan Detail of the façade

43

Mosler House Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1924–26

44

First floor plan Ground floor plan

The prominent location overlooking a lake determines both the placement of the house on the site as well as the direction of movement through the building. Visitors are led by the shortest path from the entrance hall through the house to the covered terrace overlooking the Griebnitzsee lake. The building sits on a ledge above a slope that descends steeply to the lake affording a view over the wooded landscape as if from a tower. This dramatic effect is heightened by raising the level of the ground floor: al­though the house does not rest on a plinth, the monumental open stair that descends into the garden helps to create this impression. The service spaces and served spaces are clearly separated from one another and divide the ground floor into two parallel zones. The linear arrangement of entrance hall, staircases, wardrobe, toilets, pantry and dumb waiter and lift creates a ribbon of service spaces. The representative rooms – the music room, the centrally placed library and the study – are also arranged as a linear succession of spaces, a grand enfilade whose axis extends out into the garden. The adjoining dining room is given the same proportions as its counterparts in the earlier Riehl and Perls Houses. Measur­ ing exactly 6 by 9 metres, it again corresponds to a ratio of 2:3, but here opens directly onto the garden outside.1 From the centre of the room, one has views of the surroundings in all directions creating an impression of spaciousness. While the building does not directly adjoin the lake, the view from the terrace looks over the water. The view is carefully framed so that the water is seen directly behind the travertine ledge of the terrace, with the garden obscured from view. The projecting travertine block of the terrace therefore not only acts as a podium on which the architecture rests but also creates the impression of residing above the lake. Although this “country house”2 built for the banker Georg Mosler in the villa colony in Neubabelsberg near Potsdam has not been viewed as a high point in Mies’ oeuvre of works, it is still notable, if not for its stylistic aspects, then for the quality of its materials and execution. The heavy entrance door, which visitors reach via a set of travertine steps, is faced with a sheet of solid oiled oak. The floor of the entrance hall is paved with Carrara marble, and the grander of the two inner staircases is made of solid walnut. The doors are veneered with Caucasian walnut, along with some of the wall panelling. The window shutters are operated via a complex mechanism in which the shutters travel in grooves embedded in the wall. For the door frames, similarly complex custom fittings were developed. Rather than interconnecting in the typical fashion with a single shaft, the two door handles on either side of the door are staggered, connecting with the door at two different points. The centrally placed dressing room on the upper floor is conceived as a refined piece of furniture. The fitted cupboards are clad with Mahogany Pommelé veneer and form the walls, and this haptic quality of the materials contributes to its specific char­ acter. While the room itself is like a walk-in wardrobe, seen from outside the high quality of its wood facing makes it appear like a solid block of exquisite material placed in the house’s interior. Typologically, the house represents a continuation of the Urbig and Feldmann Houses, this time with facing brickwork. While almost all of Mies’ buildings until then were masonry constructions, here brick is also used as the facing material, as it was previously for the Kempner House. Compared with the Kempner House, however, this building is both clearer and more rigorous in its arrangement. Special bricks were used in combination with a spe­­­ cific brick bond. Mies imported hand-moulded bricks from Holland which were of a smaller, non-standard size and were laid in Dutch bond,3 the same pattern as used in the Kempner House. The principle of using raised pointing that protrudes beyond the face of the brickwork also came from Holland. The outer masonry leaf was made with facing bricks and, like the coffered ceiling in the study, served a decorative and therefore non-loadbearing function. The

Street façade View from the garden View over the lake

45

46

Detail of the stairs Dressing room

Ceiling detail Entrance hall

Mosler house

47

precise detailing of these cladding layers can be seen in the indented brickwork corner detail of the shafts of the loggia columns and the cross-jointed mirrored arrangement of the Caucasian walnut veneer in the square ceiling coffers. Later alterations to the building Georg Mosler, a Jewish banker, emigrated with his family at the end of the 1930s after the Nazis expropriated his house and possessions. The German Red Cross then used the house as an administrative building. After the war, the building lay in the restricted zone of the border strip between the two German states, and was used by the GDR as a children’s clinic and home for disabled children. The walls, wooden panelling and open fireplace were lost, the bathrooms were converted and PVC flooring was applied over the parquet. In 2000, a building developer used the house as its headquarters for the duration of just a few months and removed many of the remaining original finishes. Tiling, linoleum and parquet flooring was removed as well as the historical lift,4 and doors, door frames and skirting boards were shortened to accommodate new carpeting. Thereafter the building remained unused for severa­l years. The house has since been renovated comprehensively and a new entrance added to the side of the house. The building now serves once again as a home. The building as seen from the present “There are no corridors”5 remarked Werner Blaser in a description of the key characteristics of Mies’ unrealised design for a Brick Country House from 1924. Mies had published two drawings of this project to demonstrate an architectonic principle: “The wall loses its enclosing character and serves only to articulate the house organism”.6 At the time Mies wrote this, he was working on the design of the Mosler House. Although the concept here is different, the layout of the rooms is such that there are indeed no corridors. A theme of the unbuilt project for a Brick Country House is the connection between the interior and exterior. Although the Mosler House is not as dynamic in its layout and the walls have an enclosing character, the quality of the living areas is strongly informed by the connection between the interior and exterior. The rooms are linked with the exterior via four large, differently oriented and partially covered terraces that offer different kinds of outdoor ­experiences depending on the time of day or the prevail­ing weather conditions. The fact that Mies later placed greater emphasis on his “vision­ ary” but unbuilt designs for the Brick and Concrete Country Houses in the publication of his oeuvre than on his built work from the same period contributed to the Mosler House being regarded as “anachronistic”.7 In 1924, as Mies began with the plans, he remarked that, “My receptiveness to the beauty of handwork does not prevent me from recognizing that handicrafts as a form of economic production are lost. […] We cannot save them any more.”8 Although his prognosis is expressed dispassionately and without the slightest hint of nostalgia, the Mosler House appears in retrospect to champion the very opposite. Today we know that Mies’ prognosed decline in the quality of craftsmanship was correct, and in this respect the house represents a landmark in Mies’ work for the quality of its execution. Despite the fact that the house demonstrates Mies’ declared principle of “maximising the spatial impression of the plan”, from outside it looks plain and even austere, causing the building commission to take it for a military barracks. However, its sizeable dimensions and the exceptionally high quality of its fittings can also evoke associations with a castle or manor. Mies invested a large part of the financial resources in the materials and detailing. The seemingly insignificant detail of the door fittings with handles at two different positions necessitated a complex internal locking mechanism and was an elaborate custom-made fitting

48

M o sler h o u se

with which Mies resolved the problem that the distance between the door handle and the frame is typically different on either side of the door. Around the same time, Ludwig Wittgenstein developed his famous bent door handle to resolve precisely this design problem. Mies invested great effort in realising a complex technical solution that remained entirely hidden from view. 1 The dimensions of exactly 6 by 9 metres are given in the planning application documents submitted on 23 July 1924. See the planning documents held at the Conservation Department of the Potsdam Building Authority. 2 This is the term used to describe the house in the working drawings. 3 In this masonry bond, the header and stretcher alternate. It is also know as Gothic or Polish bond, and in Holland it is called Flemish bond. Mies, however, termed this Dutch bond, writing: “The plinth of the fence is executed using Dutch facing bricks laid in Dutch bond pattern to correspond with the house.” (see the planning documents). 4 The alterations are documented in detail in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten – Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung, Petersberg 2004, pp. 79–86. 5 Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe, Zurich 1991, p. 18. 6 Mies van der Rohe, lecture manuscript from 19 June 1924, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, p. 250. 7 Cf. Franz Schulze, Mies van der Rohe – A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 1985, p. 121. 8 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Building Art and the Will of the Epoch!” (1924), in: Fritz Neumeyer: The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, p. 246.

Urban House, Conversion Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, 1924–26

In this conversion of an existing house, Mies converted the conservatory into a room for the lady of the house. In addition to insert­ ing new sliding doors, he created a glazed bay window, which has since been destroyed. A residence for the chauffeur was also built on top of the garage. These conversions were made in the spirit of the original building rather than contrasting with it. While his design for the new windows emulated the other windows down to the last detail, the detailing of the new sliding doors lends them a char­ acter of their own. In the most recent renovation in 2010, further original details were lost. The timber windows of the chauffeur’s residence were replaced with plastic windows.1 1 For further information on the history of the building see: Andreas Marx and Paul Weber, “Konventionelle Kontinuität – Mies van der Rohes Baumaß­ nahmen an Haus Urban 1924–26. Anlass zu einer Neueinschätzung seines konventionellen Werkes”, in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten. Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung, Petersberg 2004, pp. 163–178.

Ground floor plan Detail of door

49

Housing on the Afrikanische Strasse Berlin-Wedding, Germany, 1925–27

50

“Few people passing by the house would give it a second look today,” 1 wrote an architecture critic of one of Mies’ early works. The same applies to the housing on the Afrikanische Straße, which is now partially obscured by a row of trees. Despite the unassuming, almost anonymous appearance of Mies’ façade, the building differed fundamentally from all other housing settle­ ments of the time. Most social housing in the 1920s was conceived as a unified architectural and urban constellation; in this case, however, the architecture was conceived together with the landscape architecture. The urban arrangement of the housing project corresponds neither to Berlin’s typical perimeter block arrangement nor to the ribbon development model that was held to be progressive dur­ ing the years of the Weimar Republic. The three U-shaped build­ ings clasp greened courtyards at the rear and are also set back markedly from the street, creating enough space for a front garden. Vegetation is also used to provide spatial definition through the planting of poplar trees along the street in a rhythmic arrangement that relates to the architecture: a pair of trees flanked each of the entrances to the houses. As Fritz Neumeyer has remarked, nature is used here as an “architectonic element”.2 At the ends of the rows lower building volumes have been arranged that turn the corner and create gateway situations into the side streets. Two identical façades stand opposite one another, defining a space between them. The long row-buildings and the attached end buildings are joined together by rounded balconies. Like hinges these balconies connect the two different vol­ umes while respecting their independence. The end buildings similarly mediate between two different building patterns, forming a transition to the neighbouring small housing estate of freestand­ ing houses that border a nearby park. The floor plans of the end buildings are dimensioned much like his earlier Perls House. The ratio of length and breadth corresponds to the Golden Section. Even the materiality of the ochre-coloured render resembles that of his earlier building. Although this was the first more extensive housing complex planned by Mies, the end buildings are in many ways like freestanding buildings. This is the impression one has from certain perspectives. The separate building volumes are put together like modules. At one end of the complex, a constellation of three of these mod­ ules is used to form a corner situation. The way they are join­ed ­without meeting at the corner results in an indented “negative corner”, albeit here at an urban scale, which would later become a characteristic element of many of Mies’ details. The floor plans are conventional in their arrangement, with one notable exception when compared to other designs of the time: the kitchen is the largest room in the apartment. This takes the form of a kitchen and living room with a loggia that opens onto the outdoor areas. This concept differs from many other complexes of the time, including Bruno Taut’s floor plans in which the kitchen is subordinate to another space. In the Afrikanische Straße the kitchen is the centre of the apartment. By opening this space to the outdoors, each apartment benefits from the spaciousness that characterises the overall urban arrangement. Mies’ design respects the pressing need to building econ­ omically at the time. The buildings possess a plinth and an eaveslevel cornice faced with brick that run the perimeter of the build­ ing. For this Mies used a cross bond that has a rustic character typical for Berlin, but that he only ever used for the base zone of plastered buildings. 3 Otherwise the design of the façades is a product of the arrangement and proportioning of the openings, and this followed a particular system. The single windows illumin­ ate the bathrooms, the pairs of windows the bedrooms, and the rows of three windows the living rooms. The thin vertical strips of windows light the stairs, and the thin horizontal strips the roof space. The arrangement of the windows on the façade is like a

Site plan End buildings

Terraced housing End building

51

52

Ground floor plan Elevation of an end building

Façade of the terraced housing

Housing on the Afrikanische Strasse

53

54

French windows in the living and dining area Balcony

diagram that reflects the internal arrangement of the house and refrains entirely from individual variation or expressive gestures. The precision of the proportioning was described by Sergius Ruegenberg, a member of Mies’ staff: “From the very beginning as I started making drawings for him for a block of housing on the Afrikanische Straße, he was interested in every detail. This house was to be built with very conventional materials […]. We had brick, we had timber windows and ceiling joists, which are as old as can be. The only truly new aspect was the flat roof. And that inter­ ested him so much that he sat down next to me and worked with me sketching out details of the timbers. It was the same with the proportions of the windows in the wall surfaces. That was really all we had to play with: making the fronts of these large housing blocks as beautiful as possible by proportioning the windows and wall surfaces. I laid sheet after sheet of tracing paper over one another and then we shifted the lines micrometre for micrometre, made them wider apart, then smaller and compared them with one another.”4

produced on a phonograph record, Mies in Berlin, Bauwellt, Berlin 1966. 7 Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe – A Critical Biography – New and Revised Edition, Chicago, London 2012, p. 83. 8 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 20 (in: Interbuild, June 1959).

Later alterations to the building After the war, the buildings were given a rough render coat, which was typical for the time. This was only replaced in 1998 on the street-facing façades by an ochre-coloured finer render. Based on old material found in the building, the reddish colour of one of the staircases was restored. Of the original windows and doors that still exist, many are in a perfect condition. Unfortunately, these are gradually being replaced by modern reconstructions. The building as seen from the present Twenty years after the complex was completed, Philip Johnson wrote: “In 1925 he built a group of low-cost apartments for the city of Berlin, in which, despite the exigencies of economy, plan and fenestration, he achieved an effect of simple, unforced dignity.”5 For Mies, Johnson’s choice of words – low-cost and simple – were inappropriate as descriptions for his own work: “Please­do not confuse the simple with the simple-minded. There is a differ­ ence. I love simplicity, but probably for reasons of clarity, not cheap­­ ness or anything like that. That does not enter our heads when we are working.”6 While Franz Schulze wrote in the mid-1980s that the complex “typified the leanly functional architecture of the Existenzminimum,”7 Reyner Banham, Julius Posener and Fritz Neumeyer have argued that the qualities of this project set it apart from other housing schemes of the time. In retrospect, we can see that this project marks a turning point in Mies’ oeuvre. He himself said that 1926 was a crucial year for him: “I would say that 1926 was the most significant year. […] It was a year of great realization of awareness.”8 But this shift from “conventional” architecture to “radically modern” architecture did not take place as abruptly as it is often portrayed. The façades of this housing scheme, with their precisely incised timber windows, are as symmetrically arranged as in the case of his equally solidly built villas in which house and garden are likewise fashioned into a whole. As with his houses, here too elements were mounted on the façades for climbing plants to grow up. 1 Peter Blake describing the Perls House in: The Master Builders: Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, New York 1960, p. 176. 2 Fritz Neumeyer, “Schinkel im Zeilenbau – Mies van der Rohes Siedlung an der Afrikanischen Straße in Berlin-Wedding”, in: Andreas Beyer, Vittorio Lampugnani and Gunter Schweikhart (eds.), Hülle und Fülle – Festschrift für Tilmann Buddensieg, Alfter 1993, p. 420. 3 Mies used this cross bond a second time for the Verseidag Factory in Krefeld. 4 Sergius Ruegenberg in conversation with Günther Kühne on 28 Feb. 1986, in: Bauwelt, vol. 11, 1986, pp. 348–349. 5 Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 35. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964,

End buildings

Housing on the Afrikanische Strasse

55

Wolf House Guben, Poland, 1925–27 destroyed

In this house situated high above the city with a panoramic view, the large living rooms – the music room, drawing room and din­ ing room – are linked with one another at their corners. The diagonal motion begins as soon as one enters the house from the east, as the entrance door is positioned in the corner of the vestibule. Like the Kempner House, the entrance is placed to one side, however, here one moves not through a linear progression of rooms but follows a dynamic path through the house, changing direction constantly. The house is positioned some way away from the street and is reached via a long approach road to the north of the house. To the south, the building transitions into a terrace offering a broad view over the city. As with the Kempner House, the façades are made of brick laid in Dutch bond, although here the window lintels are not articulated in the brickwork. Bricks are also used to pave the steps outside and the terrace, as well as for the walls that extend into the landscape. The accessible roof terrace is likewise paved with brick, and the materiality of the buildings lends the building a sculptural orthogonality. The house was destroyed during the war and the ruins dismantled. All that remains today is a garden wall. 1 1 Leo Schmidt (ed.), The Wolf House Project. Traces, Spuren, Slady, ­Cottbus 2001.

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Second floor plan First floor plan Ground floor plan

Elevation

Monument to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg Berlin-Lichtenberg, Germany, 1926 destroyed

For the tomb of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and other socialists murdered in 1919, Mies created a monument in Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in Berlin. The monument is both an object as well as a space. The monument itself stood in the centre of a low-walled enclosure. Mies later recounted how he came about the commission almost by chance after Eduard Fuchs, the owner of Mies’ sec­ ond house, showed him a proposal: “It was an elaborate stone monument with Doric columns and medallions of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. When I saw it, I started to laugh and told him it would be a fine monument for a banker. […] I told him I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I would do in its place, but as most of these people were shot in front of a wall, a brick wall is what I would build.”1 The monument was clad in brick laid in an irregular masonry bond – unique in Mies’ oeuvre – with an upright course of bricks around the base of each cuboid block. To support these cantilevering blocks, a bearing was needed that is concealed behind the brickwork. The monument was demolished in 1935. For a long while, nothing was known about the reverse side of the monument. A photograph published in 2006 reveals that it followed the same principle as the front face.2 1 Mies in a letter to Donald Drew Egbert, in: idem., Social Radicalism and the Arts – Western Europe, New York 1970, pp. 661–662. 2 Mies Haus Magazin. Periodikum zur Kultur der Moderne 2, 2006, p. 40.

Elevation Top view

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Weissenhofsiedlung Apartment Block Stuttgart, Germany, 1926–27

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Mies was commissioned with the design of a demonstration housing colony in his position as vice-chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund. The houses designed by different architects including their fully-furnished interiors were part of an exhibition open to the public. In addition to developing the urban concept for the colony, Mies also designed the largest of the buildings including two apartments and their furnishings. He was even able to decide which architects were to design the houses and invited “leading representatives of the modern movement”1 who would transport the model character of the colony. “It was something like a mediaeval town,” 2 remarked Mies and presented a massing model that in its original version resembled less a master plan than a structural principle which, like the monument for Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, was defined by a free arrangement of projecting and receding cubist forms. Mies designed a sculptural constellation of building volumes that followed the contours of the site, resulting in a terraced complex that rode the arc of the hillside, the backbone of which was his own housing block. This was a long row of buildings with a nearly north-south orientation. The building was placed on a plinth that was articulated like a step in the topography and served as a terrace for the apartments. The roof was also used as a terrace. Peter Behrens, who also contributed to the project, examined the same theme in his “terraced rental house”. Even without imposing rules on the participants, it proved possible to achieve a degree of uniformity. Mies explains: “I have refrained from laying down a rigid program in order to leave each individual as free as possible to carry out his ideas. In drawing up the general plan I felt it important to avoid regulations that might interfere with free expression.”3 Nevertheless he did ask each of the architects to embrace one principle: “Paint it white.”4 As with his earlier freestanding buildings, Mies gave his apartment building a “public” frontage to the street and a “private” façade facing the garden. While the entrance side presents a closed and austere face, the rearward side opens onto the landscape. Positioned on top of a hill, the central apartment building of the Weißenhofsiedlung offers a panoramic view over the landscape as if from a high-rise tower. The building responds to the context that Mies himself had developed and at the same time presents itself to the road – like the Afrikanische Straße housing scheme in Berlin before it – as an ideal stereometric building volume. Here too the windows are placed almost flush with the outer face of the building so that the wall, lacking the modulation provided by window jambs, appears to span the frontage like a membrane rather than as a massive wall. This emphasises the volumetric quality of the architecture, which together with the surrounding buildings and the topography is perceived as a coherent entity. This impression of the stylistic consistency of the colony caused Philip Johnson to later coin the word “International Style”. Its primary characteristic, he notes, is “the regularity of the skeleton structure as an ordering force in place of axial symmetry.”5 In the case of Mies’ apartment building, this does not apply. While it does have a skeleton frame structure, the spacing of the axes is irregular: the structural system has a rhythmic arrangement and the façade is arranged symmetrically. The rows of windows recall the industrial character of ribbon windows, but closer inspection reveals that these are subdivided rhythmically at intervals, albeit dis­creetly. The “classical” articulation of the corners of the build­ ing is only apparent in the setback top floor on the roof. The load­ bearing structure remains concealed. The building is a steel construction with masonry wall infill. The skeleton frame makes it possible to arrange the floor plans more flexibly, which are designed by different architects. In his own apartment design, Mies demonstrates a system of

Ground floor plan Upper floor plan

Site plan East façade

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changeable lightweight partitions that are clad in high-quality Macassar panelling and stand as a freestanding core in the room. ­­­Mies describes his design concept as follows: “As you know, I intend to try out the most varied plans in this apartment house. For the time being, I am building only the outside and common walls, and inside each apartment only the two piers that support the ceiling. All the rest is to be as free as it possibly can be. If I could contrive to get some cheap plywood partitions made, I would treat only the kitchen and the bathroom as fixed spaces, and make the rest of the apartment variable, so that the spaces could be divided according to the needs of the individual tenant. This would have the advantage that it would make it possible to rearrange the apartment whenever family circumstances changed, without spending a lot of money on a conversion. Any carpenter, or any practically minded layman, would be able to shift the walls.”6 The principle of a free plan that he describes is not new but at that time was not used widely in housing. Other architects also propagated this principle, such as Le Corbusier, who built two of the houses in the colony. A few years earlier, in his first published text, Mies had called for a constructional separation of structure and spatial divisions. “The only fixed points in the ground plan are the stairs and the elevator shafts,” he wrote. “All other subdivisions of the ground plan are to be adapted to the respective needs”.7 Given the development of his later work, this first text appears in retrospect to be something of a manifesto. Only after working for 20 years in his own right did he finally achieve this constructional separation of structure and partition in his design for the apartment building in the Weißenhofsiedlung. Later alterations to the building During the war, the building was converted into a children’s hospital. The original floor plans and room-height doors were lost in the process. From 1984–86 the building was comprehensively renovated, but here too changes were made to the building. The façades were clad with polystyrene foam insulation to conform to thermal insulation regulations, which increased the depth of the window jambs from 13 to 17.5 cm. The original wooden twin-pane windows were replaced with insulated double-glazed windows and the original linoleum floor with PVC flooring. One of the demonstration apartments was reconstructed, although without resur­­ re­ct­ing the system of demountable partition walls.8 The building as seen from the present The Weißenhofsiedlung exhibition attracted several hundred thousand visitors and was a success for the Deutscher Werkbund not just as a demonstration of the newest developments in architecture, but also as a manifestation of a new movement. But because by definition Neues Bauen – New Architecture – broke with the conventional ways of building, the colony was also perceived as a provocation. This can still be seen today in those ­cases where politicians ordered that flat roofs be converted into pitched roofs. As a large-scale media event, the architecture of the Weißenhofsiedlung was clearly influential. In the context of Mies’ later work, the realisation of a free plan was important. In retrospect, however, the architectonic potential of separating the loadbearing from the non-loadbearing walls was only hinted at. The loadbearing steel structure lies in the plane of the façade. The steel profiles of the structural frame are incorporated into the structure of the wall and lie buried beneath a layer of plaster, which was later to be the source of damages; but this construction did make large glazed surfaces possible as well as a modern expression that Mies had not articulated with such clarity in his earlier built works. The widespread media attention that this architecture received was a new phenomenon for Mies and had a substantial effect on his career.

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East façade Staircase window Stair balustrade

Without maintenance and renovation, the building would today be a ruin. It was, however, built quite consciously as a prototype, and it would be wrong to declare the building a typical example of functionalist architecture for the most basic needs of living. It differs from most of the radically modern buildings of the time, in which being avant-garde conditioned breaking with the tradition of building. The architectural quality of Mies’ apartment build­ing is the product of his twenty years of experience of erecting good buildings in almost any situation – good in terms of their use of materials, solid construction and the perfection of details. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Deutscher Werkbund (ed.), Bau und Wohnung, Stuttgart 1927. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Henry Thomas CadburyBrown in: Architectural Association Journal, July/Aug. 1959, p. 31. 3 Cf. note 1. 4 Cf. note 2. 5 Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 43. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in a letter to Erna Meyer from 6 Jan. 1927, in: Karin Kirsch, The Weißenhofsiedlung, New York 1989, pp. 47–48. 7 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Frühlicht, no. 4, 1922, p. 124. English translation in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 240. 8 Cf. Hermann Nägele, Die Restaurierung der Weißenhofsiedlung 1981–87, Stuttgart 1992.

Floor plan of an apartment West façade

Wei ssenho fs ie dl u ng Apartmen t B l o c k

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Glass Room “Die Wohnung” Werkbund Exhibition, Stuttgart, Germany, 1927 destroyed

Even though the Glass Room was built as an installation in an exhibition context, it can be regarded as a manifesto for a r­ e­sidential space.1 Mies employed furnishings to exemplify the diffe­r­­­­­ent ­residential zones of a house, while allowing these to transition into one another in a single flowing spatial continuum. From a vestibule, one entered a living area, denoted by armchairs and a couch table, followed by a dining room with dining table and workroom with desk. The dynamic constellation of spaces is best understood by walking through the rooms. As soon one enters a new zone, one’s view is drawn to the sides where further spaces can be seen behind the glass wall. Views also open onto two “outdoor spaces”, an elongated planted space and a courtyard-like space contain­ ing a sculpture by Wilhelm Lehmbruck. Visitors are led along an S-shaped path around the room-height panes of glass. The flooring material of black, white and red areas of linoleum reflects the different zones. The floor covering continued with a uniform composition into the neighbouring square hall in which the German Linoleum Works presented their products. The inter­ior of both now demolished halls at Gewerbehalleplatz was designed by Mies and Lilly Reich – and for the hall with the linol­eum exhibition with the artist Willi Baumeister. The Glass Room came about as a result of Mies’ own initiative: three months before the exhibition was to begin, Mies put the idea to the Association of German Glass Producers who ­agreed to sponsor the exhibition. The installation was dismantled after the end of the Werkbund Exhibition. 1 In the exhibition catalogue, the room is called the “living room”. See also Karin Kirsch, Die Weißenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart 1987, p. 36.

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Floor plan

Samt und Seide Café (Velvet and Silk Café) Berlin, Germany, temporary installation for an exhibition 1927 destroyed

Together with Lilly Reich, Mies created a temporary installation for the fashion exhibition “Die Mode der Dame” (Women’s Fashion) at the Funkturm in Berlin. At one end of a long hall, coloured fabric was draped over bent tubular metal rods: “black, orange and red velvet; gold, silver, black and lemon-yellow silk.”1 As with the Glass Room, the installation demonstrated a spatial principle that would come to be known as “flowing space” in which the different spatial areas are linked to one another at their corners. In contrast to the orthogonality of the Glass Room, the character of the fabric is addition­ally emphasised by the use of curved forms. The reconstructed floor plan, which is reminiscent of an abstract De-Stijl composition, shows the structure of the draped walls between which Mies’ chairs and table stood. The sumptious quality of the fabric is heightened by the light colour of the linoleum floor. 1 Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 50. A detailed description of this project, which was later also erected in Holland, can be found in: Christiane Lange, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Architektur für die Seidenindustrie, Berlin 2011, p. 71–82.

Floor plan

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Fuchs Gallery, Addition to the Perls House Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany, 1927–28

This building is an extension to the Perls House. The scholar and art collector Eduard Fuchs had since acquired Mies’ second house and required additional space to house his collection. The first room of the extension is an L-shaped library reached via the music room of the house, with two exhibition spaces beyond, one of which echoes the study in the main house.1 The row of five French windows, complete with its cornice designed in 1911–12, has also been mirrored in the extension. In the ground plan, “I have abandoned the usual concept of enclosed rooms and striven for a series of spatial effects rather than a row of individual rooms.”2 Although Mies was referring here to his unbuilt project for a brick country house, his words also aptly describe the character of the Fuchs Gallery. As in the Glass Room in Stuttgart, the visitor is led along an S-shaped path through the spaces, which flow into one another. Despite the conceptual contrast to the earlier Perls House, the new building also faces onto the existing garden. The central gallery space opens directly onto the sunken garden courtyard that Mies had already used to establish a connection between indoors and outdoors. The continuity of the formal language of the architecture, as seen in the uniform appearance of both façades, reinforces the spatial definition created by the building. By using two similar façades to define a space – either opposite one another, such as in the Afrikanische Straße housing project, or in an L-shaped constellation as here – the outdoor space becomes part of the architecture. The addition has an accessible flat roof upon which a further building element is placed at right angles. The roof terrace and the pavilion can only be reached via the main house. The pavilion is connected to the house by a horizontal plane that arches very slightly to create the visual impression of a perfectly horizontal line.3 From the roof terrace one can look over the garden as well as over the L-shaped complex of the Werner House next door, where the gesture of a wing extending into the landscape reoccurs. Later alterations to the building During the Nazi period, the building was altered beyond recog­ nition: further rooms were added, new windows inserted and the interior completely rearranged. Since then, the original condition of the exterior has been reconstructed. However, the design of the glass wall where the old and new parts join is a matter of specula­tion as there are neither documented plans nor historical photos.4 The internal arrangement has since been modified to suit the needs of a school, and the building now has a link to a new building. The sunken courtyard area made of rough-hewn stone, which shares the same design as that in the garden of the Werner House, may still be intact beneath the grass lawn. The building as seen from the present When asked which year he felt was especially pivotal for the development of modernism, Mies answered: “I would say that 1926 was the most significant year. Looking back it seems that it was not a year in the sense of time. It was a year of great realization of awareness.”5 This fundamental shift that Mies refers to is reflected in his built work from this period. From this time onwards his build­ings took on a much more avant-garde, modern character similar to that adopted by other architects some years before. If one compares the Mosler House, completed in 1926, with the Lange and Esters Houses designed in 1927, one can see a radic­ ­al stylistic change in direction. The Fuchs Gallery was built during this period of reorientation. As such the building exhibits elements of the new as well as the old. If, however, we consider Mies’ work in terms of its spatial structure rather than its stylistic expression, the change in direction is not quite so abrupt. While the Fuchs Gallery anticipates elements of Mies’ later work, it is still very much part of his early oeuvre. As if wishing to underline the continuity of his work, this building

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First floor plan Ground floor plan

View from the garden

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reuses a motif that he designed 16 years earlier and creates an Lshaped space that was to become formative for the future. 1 The original floor plan of the executed design, dated 10 May 1928, is available in the building records for the “Hermannstraße 14–16” in the Bau- und Wohnungsaufsichtsamt Zehlendorf (Building Control and Housing Department). Very few photos remain of the original building. 2 Mies van der Rohe in a manuscript from 19 June 1924, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, p. 250. Mies was describing his unbuilt design for a brick country house. 3 Jörn Köppler, “Natur und Poetik in Mies van der Rohes Berliner Werken”, in: Christophe Girot (ed.), Mies als Gärtner, Zurich 2011, p. 33. 4 Dietrich von Beulwitz, who renovated the building, assembled a collection of all the available documents he could find (to date still in his ownership) that record the original condition of the building. For further information on the renovation, see: Dietrich von Beulwitz, “The Perls House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe”, Architectural Design, vol. 11–12, 1983. 5 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 20 (in: Interbuild, June 1959).

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View from the garden Extension View into the garden

Façade of the extension

fuchs gallery, addition to the perls house

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Lange and Esters Houses Krefeld, Germany, 1927–30

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The two neighbouring houses for the managing directors of the Verseidag silk-weaving mills differ markedly from the buildings in the surroundings. Although faced with brick, the predominant building material in the region, their flat roofs and L-shaped arrangement lend them a sculptural appearance of cubist volumes. The lack of overhanging eaves and projecting bays heightens the sense of geometric clarity. The appearance of the buildings changes as one moves around them. From the garden one sees a stepped arrangement with large windows and terraces. Some of the windowpanes can be lowered into the floor. The division between inside and outside is overcome by staggering the buildings, allowing diagonal views from outside through the interior to the outside areas beyond. Trans­­i­­t­ion­al zones are also used to create a sense of interlocking spaces. The roofed-over terraces, for example, are given windows to b ­ ecome outdoor “rooms”.1 While the building volumes present a closed, block-like frontage to the road, the reverse ­effect is created on the garden-side: the building and terraces transition into the landscape. It is apparent when visiting both buildings consecutively that they were designed together. They share not only the same construction methods and details but also the same principal spatial arrangement, with only slight variations. The centre of each house is an elongated hallway which leads on to the various rooms. In the Lange House to the west, this hallway ends with an apse which was designed to hold an organ and could be sep­ arated off from the main space using a curtain. In both houses, the rooms of the owners were located to the west with a similarly L-shaped dining room between the hallway and the roofedover terrace. All of these rooms open directly onto an outdoor space, as do the series of bedrooms, each with an own bathroom, on the upper floor. Although the houses are brick buildings, the long horizontal bands of windows suggest a more modern construction technique: embedded within the walls are numerous concealed steel members that together constitute a complex steel structure. Al­ though the brick facing made of Bockhorn brick laid in English bond creates the impression of solid masonry walls, especially as wall planes extend out into the garden, they are in fact simply a facing layer. The meticulously executed brickwork is simply a skin, while the loadbearing walls are made of standard brick masonry with a different bond. 2 The choice of brick bond gives the facing skin a more abstract treatment than the Dutch bond used for the earlier Kempner, Mosler and Wolf Houses, and window lintels and coping details have not been articulated. The walls are capped by a narrow metal sheet covering while the window openings look as if they have been cut directly out of the surface of the wall. Philip Johnson remarked on Mies’ use of brickwork as follows: “His admiration led him to extraordinary measures: in order to insure the evenness of the bonding at corners and apertures, he calculated all dimensions in brick lengths and occasionally went so far as to separate the under-fired long bricks from the over-fired short ones, using the long in one dimension and the short in the other.”3 The striped appearance of the brickwork that can be seen under certain lighting conditions further emphasizes the horizontality of the buildings. Although both houses are built of brick, their large horizontal windows are more reminiscent of the unrealised “Concrete Country House” project that Mies designed in 1923 to demonstrate the particular potential of concrete. He argued that in concrete walls, which he described as a “skin”, it was possible to place windows freely as needed: “I cut openings into the walls where I need them for view or illumination.”4 The windows in the houses for the two art collectors in Krefeld frame views of the landscape that enter into a dialogue with the paintings hung in the interiors.

Side entrance, Esters House

Street elevation, Esters House Side courtyard, Esters House

69

70

First floor plans Ground floor plans

lange and esters house

71

Later alterations to the buildings Both buildings are now part of an art gallery and their interiors have therefore been simplified. Numerous architectural elements and fittings have been removed, including doors, fitted display cabinets, partitioning walls made of timber panelling, cupboards that were room dividers, curtains, ceiling lights designed by Mies as well as the travertine slabs that projected out of the walls as ledges for sculptures. Consequently, the spaces in the interiors appear not only more purist but also more open and flowing than they originally were. The niche for the organ in the Lange House was closed off and the room has remained in this state since 1961 when Yves Klein painted the entire room white and declared it a work of art. This “void space” was restored in 2009. Outside, the staircase leading to the entrance of the Esters House has been altered by extending one of the retaining walls.5 The buildings as seen from the present Mies’ remarked some time later that he had originally wanted to employ more glass for these houses, which were built around the same time as the Barcelona Pavilion and Villa Tugendhat, and this has led these houses to be regarded as somewhat obsolete and compromised in his oeuvre. In retrospect, however, they reveal the ideological tension in his work at that time. On the one hand he sought to find a specific tectonic expression and haptic sensibility for each building material, and on the other he was interest­ed in the open plan spatial concepts of the avant-garde and their drive towards abstraction. Although here the rooms are traditional separate entities each separated off by a door, and a free arrangement of the plan is only partially indicated, Mies was nevertheless able to create a sense of openness using diagonal visual axes. However, the large open­ ings for the multi-leaf glass doors and the windows could only be realised with the considerable utilisation of steel members. The clear cubist clarity of the building volumes resolves this tension while the white plastered interiors continue to lend themselves to being used as a place for exhibiting works of art. 1 The principle of using windows between two outdoor areas can also be seen in Mies’ earlier Riehl, Urbig and Kempner Houses. 2 While the working drawings set out the precise position of every facing brick, the loadbearing walls were executed in cross bond. Cf. Kent Kleinmann and Leslie Van Duzer, Mies van der Rohe – The Krefeld Villas, New York 2005, p. 69. 3 Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 35. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Building“ (1923), in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 243. 5 For further information on the restoration of the house, see: Klaus Reymann and Patrick Hoefer, “Eine behutsame Erneuerung – Restaurierung von Haus Lange und Haus Esters”, in: Das Architekten-Magazin, vol. 1, 2001, pp. 28–33.

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Interiors, Lange House

View from the garden, Lange House Terrace, Lange House

lange and esters house

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74

West façades, Lange House

View from the garden, Lange House Side courtyard, Lange House

lange and esters house

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Barcelona Pavilion International Exposition, Barcelona, Spain, 1928–29 reconstructed

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“It was the most difficult work which ever confronted me, because I was my own client,” said Mies. “I could do what I liked.”1 The commission from the German Government to build the German Pavilion for the International Exposition in Barcelona lacked both a programme as well as exhibits to put on show. The official request was simply for a building to represent the nation, which caused a contemporary commentator to describe it as “architecture as fine art.”2 Mies was even able to propose where the build­ing should be sited: at the end of a long square. Raised on a podium made of travertine are a series of separ­ ate wall planes and two pools of water, creating a succession of spaces that flow into one another. The indoor and outdoor spaces are interwoven into a complex constellation in which the walls structure but no longer enclose space. Instead of “a row of individual rooms,” wrote Mies, “I have striven for a series of spatial effects.”3 In contrast to the smaller, more enclosed pool, which is lined with black glass reflecting Georg Kolbe’s sculptural figure entitled “Dawn”, the large pool “in which the water appears to be light green”4 is light and open. The walls are made of sumptuous materials including Roman travertine, green polished Tinian marble and Vert antique from the French Alps. In the central space of the interior is a wall plane made of Moroccan onyx doré with a honey-yellow colour. For the glazed walls, an entire repertoire of materials have been employed: in addition to transparent glass, the building makes use of green and grey glass, frosted glass as well as black opaque glass for the table tops. Mies’ specially designed Barcelona chairs and ottomans, with their chrome-plated steel frame and white glacé leather upholstering stand on a black velour carpet in the interior. Mies had learned to assess marble in his father’s stonemason’s firm. The selection of German stone that had been proposed was not “noble”5 enough in his eyes, and so he went in search of a suit­able specimen himself in a Hamburg stoneyard in which he discovered a block of onyx to his liking. “‘Listen, let me see it,’ and they at once shouted: ‘No, no, no, that can’t be done, for Heaven’s sake you mustn’t touch that marvellous piece.’ But I said: ‘Just give me a hammer, will you, and I’ll show you how we used to do that at home.’ So reluctantly they brought a hammer, and they were curious whether I would want to chip away a corner. But no, I hit the block hard just once right in the middle, and off came a thin slab the size of my hand. ‘Now go and polish it at once so that I can see it.’ And so we decided to use onyx.”6 The onyx wall is placed as a freestanding plane in the pavil­ ion. “One evening as I was working late on that building I made a sketch of a freestanding wall, and I got a shock. I knew that it was a new principle.”7 This principle was to become a central theme of the architectural concept and is experienced physically within the pavilion. On ascending the stairs up to the podium, visitors are led in a U-turn around a glass wall into the interior of the pavilion. The principle of the freestanding wall was instrumental in the design process. Sergius Ruegenberg, who worked in Mies’ office, described how the design was developed using a model, a method that was typical for Mies. His later office in Chicago was like a large model workshop. “I made a base out of plasticine at a scale of 1:50. […] Then I cut strips of card at the height of the walls, about 3 metres (6 cm in the model), and stuck coloured Japanese paper onto them. […] We also needed strips of glass, which I obtained from a glazier. […] Now we could start to play: because the base was soft, the walls stayed upright. […] The walls were moved back and forth, and the illumination of the room was examined using a ‘luminous wall’. Once the position of the walls and the rooms was decided on, a piece of cardboard was laid on top for the ceiling. […] We kept on removing the cardboard roof to experiment with the pos­ itioning of the columns. For the pools I had a light-green piece of cardboard and a black piece of card for the smaller pool.”8

Floor plan View looking south

Sculpture by Georg Kolbe View from outside

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Interior areas

Outdoor areas

barcelona pavilion

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The roof is borne by eight evenly spaced columns that are positioned to one side of the walls. Together with the roof slab, the columns form a structural unit that represents a separate architectonic element independent of the non-loadbearing parti­tioning walls. Different means of expression are used to emphasise the contrast between the two elements: while the symmetrical regular­ ity and static repose of the columns and roof emphasises its structural clarity, the walls create a labyrinthine constellation of spaces that lead the visitor in a circulatory passage through the pavilion. And while the columns are made to recede by giving them a reflective surface treatment that blends their materiality into their surroundings, the walls are clad with extremely sumptuous materials that assert themselves and define the character of the space around them. The industrial-looking columns have neither base nor capital and span between the floor and roof slab, while the roof slab appears to rest like a homogenous plane on the walls. The entire build­ing is, however, a steel construction that is clad with differ­ ent materials. Even the roof – which was erroneously described as being a “monolithic white slab”9 in an early article on the pavil­ ion – is a hollow steel construction. “During construction, a further sheet of metal was riveted in place at one corner near the en­trance in order to achieve the necessary cantilever,” reported Ruegenberg. “Mies did not like that at all, but in the end the whole steel construc­tion of the roof was rendered giving it the impression of a slab (of concrete for example) with a thickness of 24 cm.”10 That the roof plane is articulated as a flat surface without supporting beams is a direct consequence of the principle of the free plan. Le Corbusier had previously illustrated this same principle in his concept of the plan libre executed in concrete, where two horizontal slabs sandwich a space between them. Colin Rowe describes the reasoning behind this: “In fact, the appearance of ­beams could only tend to prescribe fixed positions for the partitions; and, since these fixed positions would be in line with the columns, it was therefore essential, if the independence of col­ umns and partitions was to be asserted with any eloquence, that the underside of the slab should be expressed as an uninterrupted horizontal surface.”11 While the classical structure of columns always sees column, capital and architrave as a single tectonic unit, in the case of the pavilion, the beam is concealed within the ceiling. Nevertheless the cruciform columns are not entirely devoid of “classical” qual­ ities: the indented vertical profiling recalls the fluting of columns from antiquity. The columns in Barcelona are made out of a complex assembly of standard profiles. Four rounded-edged angle profiles of even dimensions are welded together with four T-profiles with symmetrically trimmed crossbars to form the shape of a cross. An encasing mantle of chrome-plated sheet metal defines the final form of the column but does not reveal how the profiles were put together. This mantle can be thought of as a skin, and Mies did indeed term skeleton frame buildings as “skin and bon­es architecture”. Later alterations to the building After the International Exposition, the Barcelona Pavilion was dismantled. Although the original intention was to rebuild it at another location, the individual elements have since been lost. Much later, in 1986, the architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos reconstructed the building, although not quite on the exact same spot. Unlike the original building, the roof slab is made of reinforced concrete. The colour of the glazed walls, described as mouse-grey and bottle-green, also appears more pronounced in historical photos than in the reconstruction. In the interior a red curtain is also hung, although this cannot be seen in the original photos. The honey-yellow onyx wall of the original is much redder in the modern reconstruction, and the grain

80 barcelona pavilion

of the marble is reflected about a horizontal line at half-height. In the original wall there was also a horizontal joint – Mies described the space as being twice the height of the onyx block – but the stone patterning was not originally reflected. The building as seen from the present Although specific details of the reconstructed building differ from the original, it still provides us with an insight into Mies’ architecture. Robin Evans discovered in his own slides of the building the phenomenon of a horizontal mirrored axis – a product of the mod­ ern version of the onyx wall – that he argues makes it hard to tell apart what is up and what is down: “Notice the difficulty of distinguishing the travertine floor, which reflects the light, from the plaster ceiling, which receives it. If the floor and the ceiling had been of the same material, the difference in brightness would have been greater. Here, Mies used material asymmetry to create optical symmetry, rebounding the natural light in order to make the ceiling more sky-like and the ambiance more expansive.”12 This phenomenon he has described as a “paradoxical symmetry”, al­ though we now know that at the time the photos of the pavilion were retouched to emphasise this effect. The built context in which the building stands has since been altered. Originally a row of classical columns stood in front of the building through which a path and stairs led up to the “Spanish village”, a part of the original exposition that still exists today. Vis­ itors passed through this building and past the plateau. The Barcelona Pavilion is more than just a building; it is a complex in which the interior fuses with the architectural landscape of its surroundings to form a single entity. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Henry Thomas CadburyBrown in: Architectural Association Journal, July/Aug. 1959, pp. 27–28. 2 Justus Bier, “Mies van der Rohes Reichspavillon in Barcelona”, in: Die Form, 15 Aug. 1929, p. 423. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in a manuscript dated 19 June 1924, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 250. Mies was referring to his unbuilt design for a Brick Country House. 4 Cf. note 2. 5 Cited by Sergius Ruegenberg in a manuscript, Mies van der Rohe Archive, MoMA in New York. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964, produced on a phonograph record, “Mies in Berlin”, Bauwelt, Berlin 1966. 7 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in an interview on 13 Feb. 1952, in: Master Builder, no. 3, 1952, p. 28. 8 Sergius Ruegenberg in a manuscript in: Eva-Maria Amberger, Sergius Ruegenberg – Architekt zwischen Mies van der Rohe und Hans Scharoun, Berlin 2000, p. 78 (translation JR). 9 Cf. note 2. 10 Cf. note 8, p. 81. 11 Colin Rowe, “Neo-‘Classicism’ and Modern Architecture II” (written 1956–57, first published in 1973), in: The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass. 1987, p. 143. 12 Robin Evans, “Mies van der Rohe’s Paradoxical Symmetries”, in: AA Files, no. 19, 1990, pp. 63–64.

German Electrical Industry Pavilion World Exposition, Barcelona, Spain, 1929 destroyed

Although the second of the pavilions that Mies designed for the World Exposition in Barcelona appears to be an antithesis of his more famous Barcelona Pavilion, there are conceptual similarities. 1 Here the supporting construction is also separated from the wall, and here too eight columns arranged in two parallel rows support the roof. The use of I-beams as pilasters appears here for the first time in Mies’ oeuvre and presents a structural system that spans 20 metres.2 This pavilion also employs visual means to create the illusion of an expansive interior. From outside, the pavilion is as it seems: a white cube. The interior walls, however, were papered with photographic panels that were assembled to form vast pan­ oramas, creating the illusion of an expanse of space. Although the interior design was not from Mies’ own hand, he was obsessed with the idea of photographic wallpaper and even applied for a patent. He wrote, “Through this invention, it becomes possible to manufacture wallpapers that create an entirely new effect, especially with regard to the impression of depth. […] A particular advantage of the approach described in this invention is that wallpaper designs will no longer need to be made but can be reproduced from nature in the form of photographs that are then used to make wallpaper.”3 The square floor plan that Mies had previously avoided can be attributed to the need for four interior wall elevations of equal importance. Although the ceiling spanned in one direction, this was not visible due to the insertion of a suspended ceiling at a height of about 10 metres. The design went to great lengths to communicate the impression of simplicity, concealing the rainwater gutters by incorporating them into the white rendered brick walls. 1 A comprehensive analysis of the building can be found in: Mechthild Heuser, Die Kunst der Fuge. Von der AEG-Turbinenfabrik zum Illinois Institute of Technology: Das Stahlskelett als ästhetische Kategorie, Dissertation Humboldt-Universität, Berlin 1998, pp. 80–90. 2 The dimensions 20 by 20 meters and 15 metres high are given in the Jahrbuch der Verkehrsdirektion, Veröffentlichungen der BEWAG, vol. 10, p. 39ff. In the Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung from 21 Aug. 1929, p. 546, Walter Genzmer writes: “Its external walls are made of brick masonry, reinforced in sections by iron columns.” (translation JR) 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Verfahren zum Bedrucken von Tapetenbahnen”, patent application submitted on 12 March 1938, reproduced in: Helmut Reuter and Birgit Schulte (eds.), Mies and Modern Living: Interiors, Furniture, Photography, Ostfildern 2008, p. 266.

Elevation Floor plan

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Tugendhat House Brno, Czech Republic, 1928–30

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Situated on a steeply sloping site, the house all but turns its back on the public street. It is so uncompromisingly oriented towards the garden that the entrance elevation offers no views into the house. Even the front door is tucked away out of sight. A single inviting gesture is, however, made from the entrance in the form of a framed panoramic view over the roofs of the city to the castle on the horizon. It serves as an open belvedere. From the street, the building appears to consist of several distinct and clearly differentiated elements: an artificial plateau, a roof slab held up by a column, a non-loadbearing milk-glass wall that spans membranelike from floor to ceiling, and a monumental chimney.1 From the entrance hall, a staircase leads down to the living area. At the foot of the stairs, the path appears to lead directly towards a table in the library, presumably the owner’s desk, before opening out onto an expansive living area. This central space can be transformed into an open terrace through the ability to lower sections of the glass walls into the floor. The room is a Gesamtkunstwerk: the house, its furniture and fittings are conceived as a whole. Mies not only designed a number of items of furniture for the house, including the Brno Chair and Brno Armchair, but also specified where they should stand. Even the round dining table is anchored to the floor. The atmosphere is dominated by a radical sense of open space that extends out into the landscape as well as by the colours of the precious materials: “Living room wall: tawny gold and white onyx. Dining room wall: striped black and pale brown Macassar ebony. Curtains: black and beige raw silk, white velvet. Rug: natural wool. Floor: white linoleum. Chairs: white vellum, natural pig­skin and pale green cowhide upholstery.”2 The colours of the textile furnishings and furniture can be attributed to Mies’ partner Lilly Reich. Alongside the green Barcelona Chairs stands a red recliner. In contrast to this polychromatic use of colour, however, the build­ ing itself expresses colour only through the materials used. Despite Mies’ professed love of natural materials,3 this did not mean that these were employed only in untreated form. In his later work, for example, Mies would employ aluminium in anodized form so that it acquired a bronze colour; in the Villa Tugendhat, the inter­ ior columns of the steel supporting structure are elaborately encased in a chrome mantle and the outdoor columns given an artificial patina to bring out the high copper content of the brass so that it looks like bronze. In the ancillary spaces and lower floor, by contrast, the construction is not clad. In Brno, Mies transferred the concept of the open plan he had used for the Barcelona Pavilion to a residential context, applying it, however, not to the whole house but just to the lower floor with the representative living areas. The upper storey with the bed­ rooms contains a series of traditional enclosed rooms.4 The skeletal frame construction made it possible to employ both traditional as well as modern spatial concepts. Although the two concepts are opposing, the contrast between the two is not apparent as the ­architecture consistently reconciles the two. The cruciform columns are likewise a synthesis of the traditional and modern, their curved mantle creating a vertical delineation reminiscent of the flut­ ing of classical pillars. At the same time the reflective chrome surface has a dematerialising effect. Kenneth Frampton has remarked on the tectonic implication of this solution: “Like Le Corbusier’s piloti in his purist plan libre, this col­ umn has neither base nor capital. Both column types are, in fact, ­ab­s­­­­­t­ractions of the idea of support, since, due to the fact that no ­­­beams are expressed in either instance, a somewhat insubstant­ ial act of bearing is conveyed by the form. In both instances the ­ceiling is treated as a flat, continuous plane. Here we see how modern, beamless construction favours the suppression of the frame; that is to say, it eliminates the very trabeation.”5 Even though Mies never described it as such, the spatial con­ stellation creates a Promenade architecturale that leads the visitor

Upper floor plan Ground floor plan

View from the street View from the garden

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imperceptibly from one spatial zone to the next, the precise use of lighting choreographing the visitor’s passage through space. Rather than finding themselves suddenly in the midst of the architecture, visitors are gradually drawn in through a series of transitional zones – a phenomenon that Adolf Loos termed “Introduction”6 – without being afforded a view of the entire building from any single point. Silk curtains hung from tracks can also be drawn as dividers to create different spatial constellations. In this house, Mies also takes one of his central themes, the interplay between indoor and outdoor spaces, to new heights. In addition to using transitional spaces such as the conservatory adjoining the open living area, he also places freestanding surfaces of luxurious materials, such as the onyx wall and the macassar wood screen, using them to define space in multiple ways. The protective gesture of the rounded screen, for example, is a remarkable architectonic moment precisely because it simultaneously also creates an entirely differ­ ent situation, demonstratively opening out onto the landscape. Later alterations to the building The Jewish owners were only able to live in their house for a few years before having to flee the Nazi regime. The building was seized and plundered. Over the years, it was used alternately as a gymnasium, children’s hospital and guesthouse, each time experiencing fresh alterations. The successive reshaping and disfiguration of the architecture continued when the building was renovated in the 1980s. Tiling was removed and the building painted with a white synthetic paint that damaged the material of the structure. The last remaining 15 m2-large retractable pane of glass was also lost at this time. The most recent renovation from 2010–12 was accompanied by extensive material investigations,7 and the original condition has been so exactingly reconstructed that it is now hard to tell what is original and what is reconstruction. Such endeavours can nevertheless only be an approximation. The renewed travertine steps leading down to the garden, for example, were accidentally laid not with but across the grain of the stone material. Similarly, the sculpture in front of the onyx wall by Wilhelm Lehmbruck that played a crucial role in the architectural concept is lacking. The building as seen from the present Those who have visited the house in the past will be surprised to see that it is no longer white. The hydraulic lime render has been mixed with locally sourced sand, resulting in a slight beige colouration. The walls in the interior are likewise no longer brilliant white. A very fine plaster has been used and left unpainted, and on close inspection one can see the presence of sand here too. Even the tiles and linoleum flooring are not white but have a slight cream tone that harmonizes well with the travertine paving. Mies’ precise detailing can be seen everywhere in the renovation. The bathrooms have been reconstructed according to historical black and white photographs. Computer models of the washbasins were made from the photos and used to cast the sanitaryware, and even the taps and light switches have been meticulously recreated and the furniture reconstructed. The macassar wood screen, previously believed to be lost, was discovered in the city’s former Gestapo headquarters and reinstalled. The meticulous attention to detail in the reconstruction work contributes to the impression one has as a visitor of having travelled back in time to the point at which the key was handed over. Soon after the villa was first built, a debate ensued on the question: can one live in the Tugendhat House? The owners refuted the claim that they lived as if on show. The house is now a museum with the architecture as its principal exhibit. Shortly after completing the Villa Tugendhat, Mies did actually create a house as an exhibition. In 1931, in a trade fair hall in Berlin, he designed a completely furnished house, also with an open plan and a

84

Entrance Interior of the entrance area Reconstructed bathroom

Living room Conservatory

Tugendhat house

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retractable glass wall, whose only function was to advertise the spatial qualities of the architecture. 1 Gottfried Semper described the properties of walls as non-loadbearing elements in his book The Four Elements of Architecture. Whether or not Mies had actively concerned himself with this theory, it is instructive in analysing the architecture as each element – terrace, roof, wall and hearth – has been given a specific materiality. 2 Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 80. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: “I love natural materials” in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 60. 4 An analysis of the spatial concept is given in: Wolf Tegethoff, Mies van der Rohe: The Villas and Country Houses, Cambridge, Mass. 1995, pp. 90–98. 5 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture, Chicago, Cambridge, Mass. 1995, p. 177. 6 Cf. Heinrich Kulka (ed.), Adolf Loos – Das Werk des Architekten (Adolf Loos – The Architect’s Work), Vienna 1931, pp. 36–37. 7 Several universities were involved in the “scientific conservation study”, which was conducted under the leadership of Ivo Hammer.

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Living areas

Terrace overlooking the garden

tugendhat house

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Henke House, Addition Essen, Germany, 1930 destroyed

Although the plan shows an L-shaped space and the section suggests a two-storey extension, Mies’ addition was a single storey rear extension to an existing building from 1911.1 The L-shape results from the connection between the extension and the existing room and the second storey is a lower storey into which the vast glass wall can be sunk. Mies’ addition extends the house into the garden and employs a floor paving made of Roman travertine that covers the entire terrace so that indoors and outdoors become a single space when the window is sunk into the floor. The addition was destroyed during the war. 1 The building records for the Virchowstraße 124058 at Institute for the Protection and Conservation of Monuments in Essen document just the original building.

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Elevation Ground floor plan

Verseidag Factory Krefeld, Germany, 1930–31 extended in 1935

Third floor plan Ground floor plan

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The factory for the Vereinigten Seidenwebereien AG (Verseidag) silk-weaving mills consists of separate buildings that are grouped to form an ensemble. Mies is regarded as the author of the four-storey warehouse and the attached shed-roofed building. In addition to the plans and details drawn up in his office, there are also perspective drawings showing an extension of the building. A couple of ­years after the first phase of building, two further storeys were added to the warehouse and the area covered by the shed roofs was ext­ended. The project was realised in conjunction with the factory’s own building department that also constructed other buildings on the site. Mies was involved here as a consultant, also with respect to the formation of the outdoor spaces.1 Although the list of works mentions this project as an ensemble of “factory buildings and power house”,2 one can only speculate on the role he played in the overall distribution of the buildings. This aspect of the factory complex is, however, of relevance for its later interpretation. Although the building designed by Mies consists of two different volumes, one sees only a rectangular block on arrival. Al­ though actually L-shaped, due to an escape stair attached at one end, and despite the fact that the ground floor extends into a different building type altogether, a shed-roofed hall, the impression of the block is of clear rectangular form. This is because the build­ ing is set apart clearly from the existing surrounding buildings. The two volumes do not abut directly but are separated by a transitional space, marked in the plans as a “connecting space”. This is visible from outside as an indentation into which the delivery ramp has been inserted. The design for a factory for the textiles industry followed from the commissions for the Lange and Esters Houses, and thus continued his work for these clients. The shed-roofed building was conceived for the dye works, its north-facing roof lights providing the required even level of illumination. The four-storey block was used to store the cloth. Both parts of the building are steel constructions. While the I-beams of the shed-roofed section are left exposed, they are sheathed in the warehouse building. Mies strove for “a construction that is as clear as possible.”3 In contrast to the cruciform columns of the Barcelona Pavilion and the Tugendhat House, which are set apart from the wall, these H-shaped columns stand in the same plane as the walls – a concept that in retrospect would appear to be a model for Mies’ later work. Mies was familiar with the task of designing a factory, having previously worked on the AEG Factory project in the office of ­Peter Behrens. He noted: “Since the authentic approach to architecture should always be objective, we find the only valid solutions of that time to be in those cases where objective limits were impos­ed and there was no opportunity for subjective license. This was true of the field of industrial building. It is enough to remember the ­significant creations of Peter Behrens for the electrical industry.”4 But, like Behrens before him, Mies was not free from classical ref­ erences in the design of the factory. Despite the objective character of the building, and although Mies himself noted that “he who builds a factory as if it were a temple lies and disfigures the landscape”,5 the façades of the building exhibit classical tendencies in their proportions and articulation. While Behrens follows the example of Schinkel and emphasises the corners, Mies allows the skeleton frame construction to show on the façade. The structural frame is exposed across the entire glazed north façade, delineating the façade of the building. The result is nevertheless composed: the drainpipes are arranged rhythmically to create a 1-2-3-2-1 pattern of bays. The plinth is also emphasised: a brick band around the perimeter laid in cross bond lends expression to the plinth. Mies used this brick bond exclusively for plinth and skirting, as in his design for the houses on the Afrikanische Straße. The window openings in the ground floor also have different proportions to those in the upper storeys: below refle­cting the Golden Section, above with 1:2 proportions.

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South frontage North façade Escape stair balustrade

Warehouse Window detail

verseidag factory

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92

Shed roof Staircase

Later alterations to the building The later addition of further storeys to the warehouse was achieved using steel beams that span the entire almost 20-metre depth of the building, allowing a column-free space to be created in the top storey. Later insertions have, however, obstructed a clear view through this space. The glazing has been replaced in all but five of the windows on the ground floor and the new window profiles are noticeably thicker than before. Solar blinds have also been added that change the proportions of the windows. In the main staircase the sill height has been raised and the glazing replaced with tint­ed glass. The factory remained in use until recently. The building as seen from the present For the architects Alison and Peter Smithson, the factory building represents a new concept of defining space that would later reappear in much of Mies’ later work: “This open-space-structured urban pattern first became real in his work in the grouping of the out-riding pavilion buildings at the Krefeld factory in which are displayed all the formal characteristics – in the buildings, in the layout, and in the planting (weeping willows, smooth lawns) – that we are so familiar with from the IIT campus. In some way it was all already there at Krefeld.”6 Looking back, they trace a path from the spatial concept of the factory to the Lafayette Park project, which in 1968 they wrote was “certainly the most civilized dwell­ ing-quarter of this century so far”.7 Even though this deduction may seem a little exaggerated today, other aspects of the factory can in retrospect be regarded as pioneering. Not only the staircase with its formally reduced balustrade and the exposed wide-flange I-beam, but also the Hshaped columns can be seen as a precursor to the architecture of the ­Illinois Institute of Technology projects. This shift in the tectonic system of the column was analysed by Colin Rowe, who by examining different column concepts traces the fundamental development of Mies’ architectural system. Although the following was written about the American projects, his analysis applies equally to the Verseidag factory: “Mies’ characteristic German column was circular or cruciform; but his new column became H-shaped, became that I-beam which is now almost a personal signature. Typically, his German column had been clearly distinguished from walls and windows, isolated from them in space; and typically, his new column became an element integral with the envelope of the building where it came to function as a kind of mullion or residue of wall. Thus the column section was not without some drastic effects on the entire space of the building. The circular or cruciform section had tended to push partitions away from the column. The new tectonic tended to drag them towards it. The old column had offered a minimum of obstruction to a horizontal movement of space; but the new column presents a distinctly more substantial stop. The old column had tended to cause space to gyrate around it, had been central to a rather tentatively defined volume; but the new column instead acts as the enclosure or the external definition of a major volume in space. The spatial functions of the two are thus completely differentiated.”8 While the cruciform or circular columns bore a flat roof slab, the new column has a direction and connects to a system of b ­ eams. The dividing walls are then installed in line with these axes. Even though this is a typical construction principle for industrial build­ ings, it is relevant from a tectonic point of view, because it re­ presents a return to the frame as a structural principle.

der Rohe – Architektur für die Seidenindustrie (Architecture for the SilkWeaving Industry), Berlin 2011, p. 154. 2 Cf. Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 199. 3 Cited in Christiane Lange, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Architektur für die Seidenindustrie (Architecture for the Silk-Weaving Industry), Berlin 2011, p. 154. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe wrote this in 1940. Published in: Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 195. 5 Notebook entry from 1928, cited in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 275. 6 Alison and Peter Smithson, “Mies van der Rohe” in: Oswald Mathias Ungers (ed.), Veröffentlichungen zur Architektur, vol. 20, TU Berlin 1968, p. 9. 7 Ibid., p. 11. 8 Colin Rowe, “Neo-‘Classicism’ and Modern Architecture II” (written in 1956–57, first published in 1973), in: The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass. 1987, pp. 144–145.

1 “More displeasing than anything is the two-storey section. The more I think about this corner, the less I like it”, wrote Mies about the design for an extension in a letter to the building department from 6 March 1937. “I would suggest maintaining the clear rectangular form of this building, certainly on the first floor, and not extend it to meet the old part of the building as originally planned.” Cited in Christiane Lange, Ludwig Mies van

verseidag factory

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Model House for the Berlin Building Exposition Berlin, Germany, 1931 destroyed

This work is not an actual building but a full-scale model of a house erected as a temporary exhibit for a building exposition. 1 The roof plane rests on a grid of 15 cylindrical columns that are chrome in the living area and painted white in the bedroom and outdoor areas. This construction made it possible to arrange the walls freely and independently of the supporting structure. As further independent elements, the service areas were arranged in compact enclosed blocks. The service area with kitchen and “maid’s room” is placed in the corner of the plan while the bathroom with its rounded wall functions as a spatial divider. The service rooms are min­ imised and the rooms they serve maximised. Visitors are led along an S-shaped path from the entrance to the living room. On entering, they face a wall behind which the service area lies. The door to this area is concealed by cladding it with the same panelling as the wall. The service block is arranged alongside a long wall that extends out into the garden, and is abutted on the other side by a glass wall. This glass wall can be low­ ered into the floor to allow space to flow freely. Unlike in Krefeld, Brno and Essen, the glass wall is not placed at edge of the room but in the middle of the space. Even when the wall is closed, the space still appears to extend visually beyond the glass plane. This same principle is repeated in the bedroom on the opposite side of the house. While the living areas open out onto the landscape in an extroverted manner, the bedroom opens onto an introverted courtyard. This space extends as far as two freestanding walls that adjoin a pool, in front of which a sculpture by Georg Kolbe stood as a point of visual focus. 1 The exposition was reported on in Die Form, no. 6 and no. 7, 1931.

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Elevation Floor plan

Trinkhalle (Refreshment Stand) Dessau, Germany, 1932 reconstructed

This project was a simple modification of the garden wall of the “Master’s House” that Walter Gropius had designed for himself.1 Mies found a solution that exudes simplicity – an architecture of “almost nothing”. The means required to achieve this maximum degree of minimalism were, however, considerable. The detailing of the window opening was complicated. The steel frame of the window was mounted on rollers and could be retracted completely into the wall. Two slots were made in the wall so that when the window was open, it appeared as if a window had been cut out of the wall. The Trinkhalle was demolished in 1970 and was reconstructed in 2013–14 by the architects Bruno Fioretti Marquez in an abstracted way. 1 For further information on the history of the building, see: Helmut Erfurth and Elisabeth Tharandt, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Die Trinkhalle – Sein einziger Bau in Dessau, Dessau 1995. There are no plans of the building in this publication, however working drawings and details have since been discovered in the legacy of Eduard Ludwig and are now part of the collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

Floor plan View from the street

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Lemke House Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, Germany, 1932–33

From the road, the house appears small and unassuming, an impression that heightens the element of surprise when reaching the entrance at the side. Through the glazed door one has a long view right through the house out over the lakeside plot. Before even entering the house, one experiences a characteristic aspect of the architecture: while the interiors are oriented outwards, the volume of the building itself shapes the outdoor space. A step in the volume of the building provides a sense of spatial enclosure for the entrance, which is paved in the same mat­ erial as the house itself. To the garden, the building frames a paved terrace, creating a courtyard-like situation. The terrace was originally defined by two walnut trees that were placed in two asymmetrically arranged openings let into the surface of the paving in such a way that the L-shaped building appears to nestle up to them. The trees were important as providers of shade as the two large glazed frontages face south and west. The house stands on a slightly elevated part of the site and the terrain was modelled accordingly before work on the actual house began. The raised situation is evident as a slight incline in the paved approach to the entrance. Although barely perceptible, this artificial raising of the house contributes to how the space of the house and the path down to the lake are perceived. Although the house turns its back on its neighbours and the street, it is therefore still a product of its context. From within, the house presents a series of framed panoramic vistas of the landscape extending as far as the opposite side of the lake. The trees on the horizon also form part of the concept of the house, contributing to one’s perception of the sense of space. Their presence in the distance makes the relatively modest dimensions of the house seem more expansive. The L-shaped arrangement of the two glazed walls creates a diagonal visual axis – not unlike that in the later extension to the Perls House – from the liv­ ing room over the terrace to the elongated hall, linking the inter­ ior and exterior spaces together in a single spatial composition. The building itself is enveloped by a plain, unadorned brick wall in which different sized openings have been cut. The windows placed at the corners of the rooms have standard metal profiles as used in industrial facilities. One sees neither window lintels nor gutters. The incline of the flat roof slopes inwards from the external walls to the centre, discharging rainwater in the centre of the plan. Mies describes how working with brick influenced the design, calling it one of “his teachers”: “How sensible is this small handy shape, so useful for every purpose. What logic in its bonding, what liveliness in the play of patterns. What richness in the simplest wall surfaces. But what discipline this material imposes.” 1 Despite the self-evident nature of the brick walls, they serve to conceal the actual construction, as all one sees is the facing layer of brickwork. A precisely executed brick bond creates only the appearance of a solid brick wall. The actual construction consists of two layers, or leafs, made of different materials with different masonry bonds, the facing layer of which is anchored back to the inner layer at intervals with ties. The choice of bond, according to a manual of the day, “is determined by economic considerations. As the facing layer is generally half a brick thick, one should choose a brick bond that uses as many whole bricks as possible, thus minimising wastage.”2 Mies, however, did not adhere to this, choos­ ing a brick bond with the same number of headers and stretchers that resulted in a considerable degree of wastage. For Mies, the precision of tectonic means outweighed economic considerations: “Simplicity of construction, clarity of tectonic ­means, and purity of material shall be the bearers of a new beauty.”3 Later alterations to the building Karl Lemke, the director of a printing works, and his wife Martha were only able to live in their house for a short period.4 In 1945, the childless couple were forced to vacate the house as the pair of

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Floor plan View from the street

Garage door and entrance to the house View from the garden

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Hall

Living room

lemke house

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View from the street Hall

plots adjoining the Obersee lake were declared part of a prohibited zone. The building has since been subject to numerous alterations. Interior walls and doors have been changed, a new window opening was inserted and the garden levelled. From 2000–2002, the house was comprehensively renovated and the original situation was largely reinstated. Some original substance was, however, lost in the process, including the paving of the entrance pathway, the garage door and the double winder stairs. The oak parquet flooring, glazed walls, doors and door handles were reconstructed, as was the garden.5 Today, the “Mies van der Rohe Haus” is open to visitors and is used as an art gallery. However, the whitewalled interiors of the gallery spaces do not entirely reflect the original condition, as the south wall of the narrow hall was originally clad with dark wood panelling. The building as seen from the present Although the house clearly distances itself from its neighbouring buildings, one has to agree with Rem Koolhaas’ commentary that, “It is a mistake to read Mies as a master of the freestanding, or the autonomous. Mies without context is like a fish out of water.”6 Mies’ own description of his next project for a house can also be applied to the Lemke House. Here he uses the term “beauty”, which he frequently employed, not to describe the built edifice it­ self as an object but also the context and the experience of space. The house was to be built under “beautiful trees”7 and “it was an unusually beautiful place for building,” with a “beautiful view” towards the water. He describes the design as “a beautiful alternation of quiet seclusion and open spaces.”8 Although the Lemke House appears in retrospect to be the culmination of a long series of freestanding private houses, the idea of a low, horizontally extending brick building that creates a courtyard-like situation beneath a group of trees is important for understanding the development of Mies’ later works. In the unrealised projects that followed and later became known as the court­ yard houses, not only do single storey buildings enclose outdoor spaces, but the houses also have large glazed sections that open onto these areas. In his early monograph on Mies’ work, Philip Johnson even described the Lemke House as a courtyard house. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Inaugural address in Chicago on 20 Nov. 1938, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 316. 2 Eduard Jobst Siedler, Die Lehre vom neuen Bauen – Ein Handbuch der Baustoffe und Bauweisen (The Principles of New Building – A Manual of Building Materials and Construction Techniques), Berlin 1932, p. 56. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, manuscript from 13 March 1933, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 314. 4 For a comprehensive documentation of the history of the house, see: Wita Noack, Konzentrat der Moderne – Das Landhaus Lemke von Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Wohnhaus, Baudenkmal und Kunsthaus (Concentrated Modernism – A Country House for the Lemkes by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), Munich, Berlin 2008. 5 The renovation concept is described in: Heribert Suter, “Haus Lemke, Berlin-Hohenschönhausen – Baugeschichte, Voruntersuchung und Instandsetzungskonzept”, in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten. Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung (Mies van der Rohe – Early Built Works: Problems in their conservation and assessment), Petersberg 2004, pp. 115–128. 6 Rem Koolhaas, “Miestakes”, in: Phyllis Lambert (ed.), Mies in America, Montreal, New York 2001, p. 723. 7 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “The H. House, Magdeburg”, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 314. 8 Ibid.

lemke house

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Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, USA, 1941–58

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17 }0

18

8 14

4 16 3

5

21

1 13

7

6

2 9

12 19

11

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Site plan IIT

10

1 Minerals and Metals Research Building, 1941–43, 1956–58 2 Engineering Research Building, 1943–46 3 Perlstein Hall, 1944–47 4 Alumni Memorial Hall, 1945–46 5 Wishnick Hall, 1945–47 6 Central Vault, 1946 7 Institute of Gas Technology Building, 1947–50 8 Association of American Railroads Research Laboratory, 1948–50 9 Boiler Plant, 1948–50 10 Chapel, 1949–52 11 Test Cell, 1950–52 12 Mechanics Research Building, 1950–52 13 Crown Hall, 1950–56 14 Carman Hall, 1951–53 15 Association of American Railroads Mechanical Laboratory, 1952–53 16 Commons Building, 1952–54 17 Bailey Hall, 1953–55 18 Cunningham Hall, 1953–55 19 Electrical Engineering and Physics Building, 1954–56 20 Association of American Railroads Engineering Laboratory, 1955–57 21 Siegel Hall, 1955–58

Perlstein Hall and Wishnick Hall

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Shortly after Mies moved from Berlin to Chicago, he began work­ ing on the design for the university campus at which he was later to teach. As director of the architecture department, he saw the buildings as part of a programmatic intention. He designed not only the plan for the campus of the future Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) but also the buildings themselves. “I firmly believe a campus must have unity. Allowing every building or group of build­ings to be designed by a different architect is sometimes considered democratic, but from my point of view this is just an excuse to avoid the responsibility of accepting one clear idea.”1 Mies declared that “it was the biggest decision I ever had to make,”2 and presented an ensemble of building volumes arranged along a symmetrical axis through the central square. The plan takes a tabula rasa approach, disregarding the fact that the site was partially occupied and situated in a densely populated part of the city. Al­ though it was called a slum, numerous buildings by Louis Sullivan that stood there were also demolished in the process. Mies’ first design went as far as to extend across the historical pattern of streets, but the option of building over the streets was initially refused. In a revised design, he integrated the new buildings in the existing structure of the city. In the revised plan the central square has been retained despite the general simplification of the building volumes, which also stand more freely arranged in space. The central square is framed by the two largest buildings, the Library and Administration Building and the Student Union and Auditorium Building, neither of which were built. In his urban design concept, Mies concentrated initially on dimensioning a minimum unit that could function as a module out of which the entire campus could be developed. “When we started, I tried to find out what is a classroom, what is a laboratory and what is a shop. We came to a system of 24 feet, which equals 7.32 metres, a measurement which is used in Switzerland and in Sweden for school building. So I drew a network of 24 feet by 24 feet all over the campus. The crossing points were the points where we put columns. Nobody could change that.”3 The basic grid was also extended upwards where each storey equated to a half-module of 12 feet. This three-dimensional grid served only to provide a degree of orientation. The original site that encompassed eight blocks of Chicago lies between two sets of railway lines in a once fashionable living area and was designed as a park-like greened site with the build­ ings distributed in easy fashion over the site like pavilions. For the design of the outdoor spaces he collaborated with the landscape architect Alfred Caldwell. In the earliest drawings one can already see wide expanses of grass, asymmetrically placed clusters of trees and ivy-clad walls. The architecture and urban design were conceived of as a unit and were intended to blend with the vegetation into a new kind of urban landscape. On the neighbouring site to the east, Mies later designed three high-rise housing towers for the IIT, a commons building and a chapel. Over the course of 15 years he created 21 buildings for the IIT, but the overall campus plan remains fragmentary. “The campus was planned as a unit and, if it cannot be a unit, I have to be satisfied with the torso,”4 he declared after other architects had been commissioned to design further buildings. Although they partially adhered quite closely to Mies’ architectural language, the clearly demarcated space in the centre has never been fully real­ ised to the present day. Over the decades, the neighbouring parts of the city became ever less dense so that the intended contrast between the tightlypacked building pattern of the surroundings and the carefully ordered placement of buildings in green space and its clearly delineated contour lines became ever less apparent. In 2003, Rem Koolhaas responded in his design for the IIT McCormick Tribute Campus Center to the original concept but also most notably to the changed context. His building increases the density of the

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campus and alters the urban situation. Koolhaas understands Mies’ urban intention as being “generic”, as a flexible structuring principle that is the antithesis of a definitive master plan. “Mies does not design individual buildings, but a formless condition that can manifest itself as building anywhere and be (re)combined in an infinite number of configurations.”5 Even though the building volumes have been designed as clear rectangular forms, they are nevertheless proportioned with the utmost of care, as are the spaces between them. People pass­ ing through the campus on the road along the symmetrical axis should have originally experienced a rhythmic succession of wid­er and narrower spaces. The space between the two largest buildings should have measured exactly 24 modules and the space to the south of Perlstein Hall exactly 12. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Katharine Kuh, in: Saturday Review, 23 Jan. 1965, p. 61. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Architectural Forum, Nov. 1951, p. 104. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Henry Thomas CadburyBrown in 1959, in: Architectural Association Journal, July/Aug. 1959, pp. 36–37. 4 Ibid. 5 Rem Koolhaas, “Miestakes”, in: Phyllis Lambert (ed.), Mies in America, Montreal, New York 2001, p. 723.

Carman Hall and Chapel Siegel Hall and Crown Hall

illinois institute of technology

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Minerals and Metals Research Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1941–43 extended 1956–58

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The first building block of the new campus complex of the Illinois Institute of Technology was a research building for minerals and metals with the typological characteristics of a factory shed. The building stands immediately next to the railway lines in a lin­ ear zone where all the campus buildings with an industrial char­ acter were placed, for example the power station or electricity substation. The building was originally designed to match the 24foot grid that determines the column spacing and volume of the build­ing, but the bay length of the actual building deviates from this grid. The building’s length is instead a factor of the number of bricks. The plinth is articulated as a continuous band laid in Flemish bond and is placed in front of the structural framework of the building. Despite this separation between external skin and supporting constructions, which Mies termed skin and bones, the axes of the structural members are legible on the façade: every sixth vertical profile in the windows is slightly wider. The bay interval of the building’s depth also deviates from the 24-foot grid as the width of the site and the span of the moving crane were predefined. As such, the very first building that Mies built for the complex compromised his own rules on the arrangement and proportioning of buildings according to a grid, although this was intended only as guidance. Mies’ description of the building sounds like a list of predefined conditions: “We had 64 feet (19.51 metres) from the railroad to the sidewalk; somebody gave them a traveling crane – it was 40 feet (12.19 metres) wide, so we needed 42 feet (12.80 metres) from center of column to center of column. The rest was laboratories, you know. Everything was there – we needed steel bracing in the wall, the brick wall. It was a question of the building code. You can only make an 8-inch (20 cm) wall so big, otherwise you have to reinforce it. So we did that. Then, when everything was finished, the people from the Min­erals and Metals Research Building, the engineers, they came and said, ‘We need a door here.’ So I put in a door.”1 This description he offered as a rejection of the interpretation of this minimalist abstract form with its net of black lines and different-sized rectangles as being influenced by Piet Mondrian. He defended himself vehemently against such speculation, stating that it failed to appreciate his conviction that the form derives from the function and the possibilities that the material allows. In his inaugural address on taking up his position in Chicago, he described his programmatic intention: “Thus each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it. This is no less true of steel and concrete. We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the mater­ ial itself.”2 For this building, one of the few to be realised during the war, he was even permitted to use steel which was otherwise reserved for armaments production – because the building itself was deemed as being important for the war effort. The building was not only used to investigate the properties of materials but also served as an architectural model, demonstrating par excellence the art of constructing with steel. In this building the steel construction is left unclad. To stiffen the brick panels, special hollow profiles were developed that consisted of two standard U-profiles welded together and incorporated almost flush into the wall. At the corners of the building, wide-flange I-beams are joined to the primary steel structure and frame the façade. Although Mies was later to use suspended ceil­ ing constructions, in this building the structural framework is also visible on the ceiling. The concrete beams of the roof are left exposed as were the drainpipes that ran inside the building: “The exposed beams and girders of the roof,” wrote Philip Johnson, “are arranged as carefully as those of a Renaissance beamed ceiling.”3 This building has a unidirectional loadbearing structural frame. “Mies referred to the one-way-span structure as a ‘Gothic’ solution,” writes Phyllis Lambert. “As a linear system that could be

Ground floor plan

East façade Glazed façade facing west

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Corner details

Transition to the extension Extension

Minerals and Metals Research Building

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sliced off at any point, the Gothic was more commonly referred to in Mies’ milieu as a ‘sausage’. At the point where the slice occurs, the end wall became a diagram of the structure. The structural frame is expressed directly.”4 This can, however, only be seen on the end wall. The linear concept of this building is expressed through the use of two different façade systems: a continuous band with a hung curtain wall along the long sides and a kind of shell construction on the narrow sides, as if having bricked in a section through the building. From 1956 to 1958, Mies extended the building a further six bays towards the north. The new addition, however, is a different building type, and this can be seen on its exterior. The windows now stretch to the ceiling and lend the building – like Mies’ unrealised design from 1923 for a high-rise building made of concrete – a sense of horizontality that contrasts, without any attempt at a transition, with the existing building. Later alterations to the building The rooms on the ground floor along the west façade along with the gallery above were demolished. The original glazing facing the railway lines has also been lost. New stairs were inserted, openings made in the brick facing walls and sills modified. The wall that abutted the building to the south was also demolished. The building is used today by the architecture faculty as a studio space and is in a state of disrepair, as is the later extension. The building as seen from the present As is often typical for buildings built as prototypes, damages started to appear over time that were, however, to influence the concepts of later campus buildings. The continuous band of the masonry plinth was structurally connected to the steel frame behind, causing cracks to appear in the brickwork at the column lines due to the differential movement of the materials. These cracks led Mies to modify his principle for the façade. Instead of making the masonry extend as a continuous band around the entire perimet­er of the building, it is interrupted at each structural bay to allow the structural framework to appear on the outside of the building. The first building that Mies erected in America proved in retrospect to be immensely influential. The Minerals and Metals Research Building served not only as a model for the other campus buildings and was to be programmatic for Mies’ later work. It also demonstrated a general position that was to characterise the development of post-war architecture and culminated in Mies’ dec­laration that: “We would rather than ‘architecture‘ use the word ‘building‘.”5 Kenneth Frampton has noted that this very economical build­ ing was a key precursor to the work of the office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, as well as for European high-tech architecture. In the buildings of Team 4, for example, the early collaboration between Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, who both studied in the USA, steel girders are left exposed as a primary expressive element. The architectonic quality derives from the precision of its detailing. This celebration of the possibilities of construction was also to be a great economic success. “It is arguable,” according to Frampton, “that Miesian typology and methodology played a role similar to that exercised by the Ecole des Beaux Arts at the turn of the century, in that it provided a modus operandi that could be readily acquired while still allowing for a certain variation in the evolution of contemporary practice.”6 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, pp. 43–44. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, inauguration address on 20 Nov. 1938 in Chicago, in: Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Principles and School, Basel, Stuttgart 1977, p. 29. 3 Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947, p. 138. 4 Phyllis Lambert (ed.), Mies in America, Montreal, New York 2001, pp. 290–291.

110 Minerals and Metals Research Building

5 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Christian Norberg-Schulz, in: Éditions de l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, L’œuvre de Mies van der Rohe, Paris 1958, p. 100. 6 Kenneth Frampton, The Evolution of 20th Century Architecture: A Synoptic Account, New York, Vienna 2007, p. 29.

Engineering Research Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1943–46

Due to a shortage of steel during the war, the building was made of concrete. The frame construction is left exposed and unclad on the façade of the building while the panels between them are filled with brickwork in the lower section and window elements above. Articulating the separation of loadbearing and non-loadbearing elements is a slot made in the concrete construction. This slot was pre-fashioned as a corner indentation of the concrete c­ olumns dur­ ing casting. The meticulous precision of the brick masonry is still evident today. The large wooden window frames are divided into 16 sections, each of which has the same proportions as the over­ all window opening. On visiting the building, the architect Peter Smithson was reminded of the Verseidag factory building and wrote: “The early buildings in concrete and wood windows (presumably built during the war) … are very very Krefeld.“1 1 Peter Smithson in a letter to Alison Smithson written on 12 Sep.1958, in: Alison and Peter Smithson, Changing the Art of Inhabitation, London 1994, p. 9.

Views of the west façade

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Perlstein Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1944–47

The building, which was originally called the Metallurgy and Chem­ ical Engineering Building, has a basic structural module of 24 by 24 feet (7.32 by 7.32 metres). All the concrete-encased steel col­ umns correspond to this grid with the exception of those in the two-storey hall at the northern end of the building. Here the col­ umn spacing changes to accommodate the dimensions of a mov­ ing crane. The “classical” system of a square grid is combined with a “Gothic” system in which the column placing shifts to fit a more elongated rectangular arrangement.1 In the centre of the building is greened courtyard. This building served as a testing ground and model for a modular floor plan system in which the columns and walls stood in the same plane. 1 Myron Goldberg recalls that these are the terms that Mies used for these two principles. Cf. Phillis Lambert (ed.), Mies in America, Montreal, New York 2001, p. 229.

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Ground floor plan

View from the southwest North elevation

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Alumni Memorial Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1945–46

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Ground floor plan Corner detail

Mies’ design of the corners of this building has made it famous: it is the origin of the characteristic indented “negative corner”, which can be seen on numerous buildings on the IIT campus. The detail had already been developed in the design for the neighbouring Perlstein Hall, but it is on this building that it was im­ plemented for the first time. However, before we examine the corner in detail, let us first examine the concept of the building as a whole. Originally called the Navy Building, it was conceiv­ed for the education of marines and contained seminar rooms, ­o ffices and an armoury. In 1947 the building was renam­ed the Alumni Memorial Hall in honour of the graduates who had fallen during the war. 1 The columns of the skeleton frame construction stand on the grid that orders the entire campus. The floor plan is nine bay mod­ules long and three bay modules wide and is divided into three sections, the largest of which is in the centre measuring 5 by 3 bays. This proportion recurs in many buildings of Mies’ American oeuvre and corresponds approximately to the Golden Section. The two sections at either end have proportions of 2:3. The central section houses a large two-storey hall with galleries reminiscent of ship decks. The supporting structure of the roof is visible from below in the form of beams. In accordance with the clear floor plan, two symmetrically placed entrances are arranged opposite open staircases. All other non-loadbearing partitions are arranged freely in space and can be removed as required. The building served as a model: together with the neigh­ bouring buildings, a uniform ensemble arose that laid down a pattern for the design of the later IIT buildings. As with the earl­ ier Minerals and Metals Research Building, the skeleton construction can be seen on the building’s façade, much in the manner of a traditional half-timbered construction. In the Alumni Hall, however, one does not see the supporting structure itself but rather applied elements that express the underlying structure. This contrasts with the earlier building: while the Alumni Memorial Hall is also made of steel and employs the same standardised I-beam profiles, these are encased in a mantle of concrete for fire safety reasons. The steel skeleton framework was first erected on a concrete slab foundation and then encased in concrete. On the external skin, the quadratic concrete columns are in turn clad with steel profiles, creating in its architectonic articulation the impression of a steel building. Franz Schulze summarises the principle as follows: “That is to say, the real structure of Alumni Memorial Hall, though suppressed, is expressed: what one knows is there is not what one sees, but is made evident by what one sees. Mies’ rea­ soning is tortuous, but ever so much his own.”2 This layering principle is expressed at the corners of the build­ ing. The corner itself is cut out of the building volume. The result is a vertical channel, an indentation that could be described as a “negative corner”. From deeper within this cut-out corner – set back from the front face – a second projecting “positive corner” made of a steel angle profile can be seen that suggests the presence of an inner core, hinting at the loadbearing structure within. This steel-lined indentation does not continue right to the ground. Instead the bottom courses of masonry form a regular corner and are covered by a metal plate. There are, of course, pragmatic reasons for raising the vertical corner element off the ground – to prevent corrosion, for example – but the hori­zontal base plate can also be read as a plinth on which to display this architectonic “still life”. 3 Similar negative corner details were developed at the time when Mies worked in Peter Behrens’ office many years earlier. 4 Mies’ estate contains endless sketches concerned with the detailing of this building. The metal elements of the façade, which had been erected as part of the first step, prior to the concrete encasement of the loadbearing framework, are expressed in the

North façade Corner detail East façade

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Corridor Detail of door

wall as pilasters. This can be seen as a constructional development of the Minerals and Metals Research Building. Later alterations to the building In the early 1970s, a floor was inserted in the two-storey hall, entailing the loss of two of the galleries. Walls were added and air conditioning units inserted into window openings. The building is now somewhat dilapidated and in need of repair. The renovation measures that have been proposed will, however, impact on the architectural concept, especially if lifts are to be added to the open staircases. The building as seen from the present It was the declared aim of this building to lay down an architec­ tonic grammar for the IIT buildings that were to follow. In retro­­ spect we can see that a decade later Mies did indeed adhere to the system he formulated here, varying it here and there only slightly. The neutral architectural language of the buildings intended to express universally valid architectural principles rather than highlighting the special qualities of the specific functions. Mies was therefore sceptical of Louis Sullivan’s declaration that form follows function: “When Sullivan argued that form should follow function, it was more a reaction to what he saw. Today, I no longer believe that this can really be a binding principle. We know now that our buildings last very much longer and the functions become obsolete. Functions change so rapidly today that it is a building’s flexibility that gives it lasting value. In my view, flexibility is actually the important and characteristic element of our buildings and not the expression of its function.”5 With respect to the IIT buildings, he remarked: “We had to build school buildings, and we didn’t often know for what they would be used. So we had to find a system that made it possible to use these buildings as classrooms, as workshops, or as laboratories.”6 1 Cf. Phyllis Lambert (ed.), Mies in America, Montreal, New York 2001, ­ pp. 303–313. 2 Franz Schulze, Mies van der Rohe – A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 1985, p. 226. 3 Wolfgang Kemp, “Ein Werkbeispiel: Eine Ecke von Mies van der Rohe”, in: Architektur analysieren – Eine Einführung in acht Kapiteln, Munich 2009, pp. 65–68. 4 See the corners of the German Embassy in St. Petersburg and of the entrance portal to the Frankfurt Gasworks, in: Carsten Krohn, Peter Behrens. Architecture, Weimar 2013, p. 100 and p. 128. 5 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with the Bayerischen Rundfunk, in: Der Architekt, vol. 10, 1966, p. 324 (translation JR). 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 34.

Alumni Memorial Hall

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Wishnick Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1945–46

The IIT Chemistry Building was designed together with the build­ ings around it. The buildings employ the same façade design and the corner detail is identical to the indented “negative corner” of the Alumni Memorial Hall. The staircases likewise follow the mod­el of those in the Alumni Memorial Hall with brick masonry corners placed at an angle of 45 degrees, emphasising the direction of movement on the stair landings. Peter Behrens employed a si­milar device in yellow brickwork for the AEG High Tension Factory in Berlin.1 The rectangular floor plan of the buildings incorporates the stairs and an auditorium within its envelope. This arrangement only came about through a process of simplification: in the first campus plan, in which the pair of buildings is already marked, the auditoria were shown as separate building volumes and the stairs were also located outside the structural plan. From 2006 to 2008, the building underwent comprehensive restoration. The steel construction was cleaned and the sliding windows replaced. While the reconstructed aluminium window frames closely resemble the originals, the interior spaces have been modified more significantly: the height of the rooms has changed to accommodate the installation of a modern central air conditioning system. 1 Cf. Carsten Krohn, Peter Behrens. Architecture, Weimar 2013, p. 70.

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Ground floor plan

West façade Staircase

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Central Vault Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1946

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In contrast to the other IIT buildings that expose their steel and concrete construction, using brick only as an infill material for the non-loadbearing panels in the structure, this electricity substation is a soild brick construction. The masonry is constructed as a sing­le leaf and bears a thin concrete slab that has been fashioned as a downstand at its edges and presents itself as a deep archi­ trave that rests on the walls. The smaller of the two rooms contained the switching station, the larger the transformers. The outdoor area between this building and the neighbouring Minerals and Metals Research Building was originally closed off with a wall that united both buildings into a continuous band.

Floor plan Detail of the north-facing façade

Institute of Gas Technology Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1947–50

North façade Stairs to the entrance

Originally planned as a steel construction with outlying steel members, the building was eventually built using a more economical concrete construction. The structural framework is exposed on the external surface of the building while the panels of the skeleton construction are filled with masonry. The brick panels are capped with a concrete strip into which the windows are anchored. The external stair leading to the main entrance is made with natural stone, a higher-quality and more haptic material than the facing concrete but of a similar colour so that the use of materials creates a homogenous impression. The side stair at the rear of the build­ ing is, however, made of concrete.

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Association of American Railroads Research Laboratory Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA,1948–50

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Mies designed a group of buildings on the IIT Campus for the Association of American Railroads that form a part of the IIT complex and continue the architectural language of the preceding IIT buildings. The first of these buildings was a two-storey research and administration building which is fitted precisely into the urban grid. The building adheres to the architectonic principle of the campus buildings, with one slight variation in its detailed execution: the corners of the building follow the principle used for the Alumni Memorial Hall, except that the masonry plinth features indented corners. A music college uses the building today.

Ground floor plan Corner detail on the exterior Corner detail in the interior

Boiler Plant

The boiler plant for IIT was to replace an older facility. Mies desig­n ­­­ed the building around an existing boiler and also planned its extension. The original, almost square plan of the building was later extended according to his plan.1 Its location alongside the railway lines was chosen so that fuel could be delivered directly to the building. The architectural critic Charles Jencks later described the building as a sacred building in a critical passage in which he interpreted the building as a cathedral with a freestanding campanile, while the campus chapel, also designed by Mies, looked to him ironically like a boiler plant.“2 The interior of the power plant remains unchanged to the present day and presents visitors with a spatial experience: the platforms arranged at different levels are organised according to the Raumplan principle. Each of the plateaus affords views across to the other levels.

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1948–50

1 In 1964 the architects Sargent & Lundy extended Mies’ plan of the build­ ing a further six bays to the north. The building was extended again at a later date. 2 Cf. Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, London 1977, p. 14.

Upper floor plan Ground floor plan

View from the southeast East façade

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Chapel Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1949–52

“We will make just a box,”1 is how Mies described the only sacred building he designed: the Robert F. Carr Memorial Chapel of Saint Savior. The building is a monolithic brick construction with a floor plan that follows the proportions of the Golden Section. The orientation of the church does not follow the convention: instead one enters from the east with the altar in the west. The east and west façades are, however, identical with the exception of the glaz­ ing which is transparent at one end and sandblasted at the other. Mies said about the chapel that it is “of noble character, constructed of good materials, and has beautiful proportions,” and further that, “it is simple. But in its simplicity it is not primitive, but noble, and in its smallness it is great – in fact, monumental.”2 The altar is made of a solid block of Roman travertine. An alternative suggestion to clad the altar was brushed aside by Mies with the words: “An altar, in my opinion, is a rock.”3 The chapel contains ancillary spaces, but these are placed behind a concrete block wall which is concealed by a silk curtain. The curtain appears to hang freely in space, in a manner similar to the Samt und Seide Café (Velvet and Silk Café), as all four walls of the church can be seen in the interior and the entire width of the ceiling is visible. Although experienced as a single large space, the interior is div­ ided into a sequence of spaces. Different kinds of spatial transitions are articulated: a step in the terrazzo floor, a stainless steel railing, a plinth around the altar, and a curtain. The building was renovated in 2008–09. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Henry Thomas CadburyBrown 1959, in: Architectural Association Journal, July/Aug. 1959, p. 37. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “A Chapel – Illinois Institute of Technology”, in: Arts and Architecture, vol. 1, 1953, pp. 18–19. 3 Cf. note 1.

124

Floor plan View from the northwest Corner detail

West façade Altar

125

Test Cell Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1950–52 destroyed

Although the building is an unassuming functional building,1 it is nevertheless important as an urban ensemble. Designed together with a wall to create a single ensemble, it marks the entrance situation to the campus. The freestanding wall, which was an important element of Mies’ courtyard houses, here too serves as an integral part of the architecture. As the windows and doors open onto the courtyard, one sees only an abstract volume dimensioned according to the structural grid of the complex. This cell is presented as a basic three-dimensional urban module. “I am convinced that a campus must have a uniform design,”2 remarked Mies as changes started to be made to his urban concept. The building was demolished in 2009. 1 While there is much to be found about the building on the internet, a brickclad concrete construction, in particular in the articles by Edward Lifson, all we know about its use is that it was supposed to have been used dur­ing the Cold War for testing weapons. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Katharine Kuh in 1964, in: Saturday Review, 23 Jan. 1965, p. 61.

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Elevation Floor plan with Boiler Plant

Mechanics Research Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1950–52

East façade

The building is reduced to just a few elements, and replicates the system of the neighbouring Institute of Gas Technology in a simplified form. The articulated plinth has been omitted, as has the concrete coping above the masonry infill panels. In this building, the masonry infill is faced with a steel plate that forms the base of the ribbon windows. The brick bond used for the masonry is also simplified. The internal arrangement of the building has since been changed. The building was later extended northwards according to the original plans but by other architects.

127

Crown Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1950–56

128

Floor plan of the hall Lower floor plan

Main entrance View from the southwest

129

This building differs from all other buildings on the IIT Campus. Made of steel and glass, the hall housing the architecture department is completely open and radically reduced to its architectur­al structure conveying a sublime sense of extreme clarity. Measuring 220 by 120 feet (67.01 by 36.58 metres), it also deviates from the 24 by 24 foot grid applied to the rest of the campus. The primary construction consists of only eight columns spaced at intervals of 120 by 60 feet (33.50 by 18.29 metres) that support four deep steel plate girders from which the roof plane is suspended. “For the architects’ building I went away from the grid”, recounts Mies. “I think the architects’ building is the most complete and the most refined building and the most simple building. In the other build­ ings there is more a practical order on a more economical level and in the architects’ building it is more spiritual order.”1 This “spiritual order” relates directly to the purpose of the building, as it is here that Mies was to teach. In his inaugural address as Director of Architecture at Chicago he had already outlined the aims of his teaching in philosophical terms. An education in the building art – a term he preferred to architecture – must lead us “from irresponsible opinion to responsible insight,” and to „lead us from chance and arbitrariness to the clear law­ fulness of a spiritual order.”2 This is what the building had to dem­onstrate. It embodies an attitude that sought to reflect the authoritative architectural position of the time. The significance of the building is already evident in the cere­ mony of its approach, which is not unlike that of a sacred build­ ing. One ascends a set of travertine steps to reach a cantilevered platform that floats like a landing in front of the building. Before even entering the building one can already see the expanse of the column-free interior of the hall through the glazed frontage. The only walls in the interior are placed like freestanding furniture in the space and serve only to define different spatial z­ ones: student workplaces on each side and an exhibition area in the middle. This universal space initially also contained an office area and library. “I lived there and worked there. It was beautiful,” said Mies. “I like to work in this building. There is never any disturbance in the acoustics, [except] when the professor be­comes emotional. He should not do that. Otherwise we have no dis­ turbances. We work in groups together.” 3 The uncompromising openness of the hall was only made possible by the inclusion of a more conventional basement level reached by stairs that descend to the rooms below. Here the spatial arrangement is more profane with enclosed rooms, doors, access corridors and toilets, along with a more conventional choice of materials, such as concrete block partitioning walls. This floor is illuminated by ribbon windows of translucent glazing around its perimeter and originally housed the design department. This band of sandblasted glass is also continued in the upper hall. Only the upper section of the glass walls was transparent, along with the glazing in the entrance area, to give the workplaces a more sheltered character. From within one had views of the treetops and the sky. Mies had previously experimented with the effect of translucent glass in his design for a Glass Room in 1927 and recorded that: “Walls of opaque glass give the rooms a wonderfully mild but bright and even illumination [and] in the evening [represent] a powerful body of light.” 4 The panes of glass are 10 or 5 feet wide (3.05 or 1.52 metres) and match the module of the construction grid and the grid of metal channels in the terrazzo floor at intervals of 5 by 2 feet (1.52 by 0.76 metres). The flooring is paved with a combination of Virginia Black and Tennessee Gray marble. The freestand­ ing partitions are made of Appalachian White Oak treated with Pratt and Lambert Special Oak Stain, and the steel construction is painted Mies’ usual matt black using Superior Graphite 30, a standard product developed by the Detroit Graphite Company for painting bridges around the world.

130

East façade Entrance stairs Hall

Hall Detail of the stairs

Crown Hall

131

With Crown Hall, Mies demonstrated a typological concept for an open-plan universal space. Mies had built smaller col­ umn-free constructions in the past, for example the sports hall in Potsdam or the electricity pavilion in Barcelona, but here the construction is the dominant element. The supporting structure of Crown Hall with its large steel plate girders arranged above the roof plane is plainly visible and immediately legible even for laypeople. In the interior, by contrast, the construction is not vis­ible. The suspended ceiling even appears to float, especially when look­ing towards the light. It extends right up to the perimeter glazing and appears to do so in a continuous movement. The tectonic handling of the interior and the exterior is therefore quite different. The rhythmic segmentation produced by the deep I-beams that characterises the building’s exterior appear­ ance is not apparent from within. The strict symmetrical composition of the building and the placement of the stairs are reminiscent of Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin, but the two buildings differ in their articulation of the central space. In Berlin, the central space is focussed and converges on a single point crowned by a dome, while the central zone of Crown Hall is characterised by a sense of emptiness that animates one to pass through it. Colin Rowe has written of this phenomenon that “the flat slab of the roof induces a certain outward pull; and, for this reason, in spite of the centralizing activity of the entrance vestibule, the space still remains, though in very much simplified form, the rotary, peripheric organisation of the twenties, rather than the predominantly centralized composition of the true Palladian or classical plan.”5 Although Mies originally foresaw the installation of an air conditioning system, the building was initially only mechanically ventilated, with the exhaust vents incorporated in the suspended ceiling. An underfloor heating was installed beneath the terrazzo floor and solar gain was regulated using blinds. A former student, Peter Beltemachi, recalls that “Hilberseimer used to walk around and adjust them all day long. Hilberseimer and Mies definitely knew about the light control, because when they adjusted the blinds, a lot of it was to get some light up on to the ceil­ ing to get it out onto the tables. We talk about it today, but it was well known in those days. Light control just by adjusting the Venetian blinds was part of the original use of the blinds. Hilberseimer ran this place with an iron fist. No feet on the furniture. You couldn‘t play music. You couldn‘t smoke. It was like schools used to be. People would still wear neckties to class, Hilberseimer, when he died in 1967, that’s when the Venetian blind business went to hell.”6 The next phase of renovations will include the installation of a computerised system for regulating the blinds. Later alterations to the building During renovation works undertaken by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in the 1970s, the wall panels in the hall were rearranged and the glazing renewed. Later changes to the building codes required the installation of thicker glass panes and an air condition­ ing system was installed requiring changes to the roof. Towards the end of the 1980s the Institute of Design vacated the lower floor, and conversion works were undertaken to make the entire build­ing usable for the architecture school. The most extensive renova­tion works were undertaken in 2005 by the architecture office Krueck and Sexton Architects in conjunction with the conservation expert Gunny Harboe. As part of these works, the functionality of the vents at the base of the panels of the perimeter glazing was restored.7 The building as seen from the present Crown Hall is still used for the function for which it was originally intended. The maximum flexibility afforded by the interior has proven its worth, accommodating a variety of different uses, including

132

Hall Lower floor Toilets

an exhibition of Picasso’s works and concert by Duke Ellington and his orchestra. But what was Mies alluding to when he said the building expressed “the clear lawfulness of a spiritual order”? For Mies, this refers to Saint Augustine’s declaration that “there is no ordered thing which is not beautiful”, a sentence that he had underlined in his own copy.8 Saint Augustine differentiated between those qualities that can be perceived with the senses and the over­ arching immutable laws such as symmetry, number and unit. He wrote: “We must indeed inquire what is the cause of our being dissatisfied if two windows are placed not one above the other but side by side, and one of them is greater or less than the other, for they ought to have been equal; while if they are placed one directly above the other, even though they are unlike, the inequality does not offend us in the same way. […] Thus if I ask an architect why, having constructed one arch, he builds another equal to it on the other side, he will reply, I believe, that it is in order that equal parts of a building may correspond to equal parts.”9 In contrast to the other IIT buildings, the architectonic construction of Crown Hall is not the product of a schedule of re­quired spaces. The individual elements are joined together solely as a product of the logic and order of the building itself. Mies believed in the continuity of this order, citing that “Order m ­ eans – according to St. Augustine – ‘the disposition of equal and unequal things, attributing to each its place.’ ”10 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Graeme Shankland, in: The Listener, 15 Oct. 1959, p. 620. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Inaugural address as Director of Architecture, 1938, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 316. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Henry Thomas CadburyBrown in: Architectural Association Journal, July/Aug. 1959, p. 38. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Das Kunstblatt, no. 3, 1930, pp. 111–113. English language translation in Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 305. 5 Colin Rowe, “Neo-‘Classicism’ and Modern Architecture II” (written in 1956–57 but first published in 1973), in: The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass. 1987, p. 149. 6 Peter Beltemachi in: lynnbecker.com/repeat/mies/crowndeclinerebirth.htm 7 Cf. Elizabeth Olson, “S.R. Crown Hall” in: docomomo-us.org/register/ fiche/sr_crown_hall 8 Cf. Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 317. (St. Augustine: “For there is no ordered thing which is not beautiful”, De vera religione, XLI 77.) 9 St. Augustine, De vera religione (On the True Religion), XXX 54–55 and XXXII 59. 10 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Introduction” in: Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City, Chicago 1944. Reproduced in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 323.

Detail

Crown Hall

133

IIT Halls of Residence Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1951–55

134

The three apartment towers, Carman Hall, Bailey Hall and Cunning­ ham Hall, are planned as an ensemble that enclose an open outdoor area. The reinforced concrete structure shares the same con­struction and detailing as the Promontory Apartments: the structural framework becomes progressively more slender towards the top and the vertical members step back every few floors. The columns are articulated differently according to the load they bear and internally they are cross-shaped. The metal windows are inserted directly into the external concrete columns, and by today’s standards do not offer sufficient thermal insulation or noise protection. In advance of more comprehensive renovation works, the windows of the uppermost storeys of Bailey Hall have already been replaced, although these alter the character of the building significantly.

Upper floor plan of Carman Hall Ground floor plan of Carman Hall Corner detail

Bailey Hall Bailey Hall and Cunningham Hall

135

Association of American Railroads Mechanical Laboratory Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1952–53

136

The building was designed to be large enough for railway wagons­ to drive into and follows the same structural principle as the Min­ erals and Metals Research Building. Here too, the end wall reveals the different configurations of storeys in the sectional arrangement of the building, with a multi-storey section to the east of the building and a large hall that extends the entire height of the building. As is typical for frame constructions, the brick panels are non-loadbearing. Although the building is an industrial building, Mies has detailed the staircases with the same precision as those in the prestigious Arts Club or the later Crown Hall building. Next to the hall, which is now used by Chicago Transit Authority, a small building was erected to house a compressor.

Ground floor plan North façade Detail of the stairs

Commons Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA,1952–54

Detail Exterior view Interior view

The refectory building is a large hall-like structure made of steel. As a single-storey building, the construction needed no fire-protective sheathing. The basic structural framework is completed with the bare minimum of insertions: the window frames are attached directly to the wide-flange I-beams of the columns while the panels between them have either masonry infill or glazing. Inside, the kitchen and serving area is placed as a freestanding core in the space. Alongside the main dining hall, there are units for a bookshop, post office, doctor’s surgery and a grocery. In 2003, the building was extended with the McCormick Tribute Campus Center designed by Rem Koolhaas. Despite the fact that the context has become more crowded, the original open character of the hall still remains.

137

Electrical Engineering and Physics Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1954–56

138

Constructed out of reinforced concrete, the building was designed for the Institute of Gas Technology. The open panels in the skeleton frame construction have a masonry infill laid in stretcher bond. This brick bond, which is one brick thick, emphasises the non-load­ bearing character of the infill panel, which is arranged flush with the outer face of the loadbearing structure. A shadow line marks the division between the loadbearing and the non-load­bearing elements. The building has no façade in the sense of an applied front­age, and a front or back has not been articulated: the structure is made visible in the same way on all sides of the building. The building stands exactly within the urban grid, with a width of three modules and a length of nine. The articula­tion of the structur­al framework as a visible net of lines can be seen as a diagram that not only describes the internal structure of the build­ing but also the structure of the overall constellation of the surroundings. Until the end of the 1970s, the building contained the first industrial nuclear reactor. The building has since been extended and most of the larger glazing panels have been re­placed with small panes.

Façade Corner of the building

Association of American Railroads Engineering Laboratory Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA 1955–57

Ground floor plan View from the campus Entrance

The large hall echoes that of the neighbouring Mechanical Labora­ tory, except that this building is one bay wider, making it exactly twice as long as it is wide. Here too, the hall is an exposed steel construction with an entrance large enough to accommodate railways wagons, and here too a small building has been built alongside it. The positions of the two halls with respect to one another are a product of the routing of the railway track. The extensive glaz­ing lies in the same plane as the wall, lending the building an abstract, almost block-like appearance. The clarity of the building’s original volume has since been compromised by the addition of an extension on the north side. The building is used today by the Chicago Transit Authority.

139

Siegel Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, 1955–58

Together with the neighbouring Wishnick Hall, the Electrical Engineering and Physics Building forms a gateway, as shown in the site plan on page 102.1 The two almost identical buildings stand next to one another, adjoining an open space in the centre of the campus. While the plans vary slightly, the basic spatial configuration is the same with an auditorium arranged internally in the centre of the plan. Although built almost a decade after Wishnick Hall, the design is almost unchanged, dem­onstrating Mies’ intended continuity of architectural language. The arrangement of a pair of essentially identical building volumes emphasises the urban configuration. Today, the building stands more isolated than was originally planned. 1 This gateway situation was part of the original campus plan from 1939 but had not been implemented. Cf. Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947.

140

Ground floor plan

South façade Corner of the building

141

Farnsworth House Plano, Illinois, USA, 1945–51

142

The building stands on a park-like site directly adjoining a river, ­situated in a rural location in the midst of a hilly and wooded landscape. Even from a distance, the house exudes an air of crystalline clarity and purity. Mies designed it as a weekend house for a female doctor. Although a location on higher ground further away from the river was also possible, Mies explained: “We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both places and I proposed to Dr. Farnsworth to build close to the river where there were beautiful old trees. She was afraid that the river would go over the bank, but I still stuck to this place because I thought that [the problems could] be overcome in one way or the other.”1 Mies attempted to obtain official records of historical high water levels but was informed that these did not exist and that he should ask old settlers in the region. Mies’ response was to conceive of a building on the floodplain, raised off the ground on stilts so that the floor level was above the highest known high water level. Describing its structure, he explained that, “the floor and roof is not directly supported but is suspended,” adding that he viewed this as ”a normal way of doing it under the circumstances.”2 Later he would emphasise that he told the client he would only take on the project under the condition of having free hand in its design. “She asked me if I had ideas about it and after looking around in the different directions for the views possible I said: ‘If I would be to build here for myself I think I would build in glass because all the views are so beautiful that it is hard to decide which view should be preferred.’” 3 The house was positioned just north of a mature maple tree so that the tree shades the house from the midday sun in summer­. Despite the façades being open in all directions, the views are care­­­fully framed. The painted white steel construction acts like the passe-partout of a picture frame. “I was in the house from morning to evening. I did not know how colourful nature real­ly was. But you have to be careful in the inside to use neu­tral colours, because you have the colours outside. These absolutely change.” 4 Mies chose Roman travertine paving for the floor, pure silk shantung for the curtains and a light-coloured primavera ­veneer for cladding the inner core and its ancillary spaces. The freestanding inner core is conceived as a piece of furni­ ture placed in the space with walls that do not extend to the ceil­ing. The doors mimic the appearance of the cupboard doors so that there is no visible indication of the bathrooms contain­ed within. The construction of the building is designed to look exceptionally simple. The structure appears to consist of just two elements: vertical wide-flange I-beams inserted as columns directly into the ground and horizontal planes suspended between them. Although the roof and floor slabs are individual composite constructions made of several different elements, they present themselves as a single homogenous slab. The complexities of the technical installations are hidden away. The roof slab directs water to a downpipe that passes through the centre of the building, and the floor slab contains coils for underfloor heating. The m ­ eans of connection between the loadbearing elements are likewise concealed. A U-shaped structural channel runs around the perimeter of the floor and roof slabs and is plug-welded to the vertical col­ umns. The window frames, made of an assembly of precision-cut rectangular steel bar elements, are likewise invisibly plug-weld­ ­ed to the structural channels and vertical supports. The corner ­profiles of the window glazing are fillet-welded, while the weld seam itself is covered by end pieces or else laboriously sanded off. The only outwardly visible indications of mountings are the screws in the glazing stops for installing and fixing the panes of glass. From an engineering perspective, this is not a particularly corrosion-resistant construction, requiring considerable mainten­ ance to protect against corrosion. Less than half the material

Floor plan

Exterior views

143

144

Interior Kitchen

Veranda View of the river

Farnsw o rth Ho u se

145

would have been required had conventional hollow window profiles been used, but for Mies the clean delineation of the solid steel bar elements was extremely important. The individual profil­ ­e s are carefully put together with the precision of a stonemason. Later alterations to the building The wooden fittings in the interior have been repeatedly lost and rebuilt as a result of recurring flooding. In the most recent repairs, a clothing wardrobe made of teak, required by the ­client but never intended by Mies, was not reinstated. Mies was un­ able to persuade the client to use the inner block as a cupboard. ­Ironically the loss of this original fitting restored the uninterrupted view along the entire length of the house, as the architect had ­originally p ­ lanned it. A further element that was installed at the behest of the c­ lient, and then later removed, was a fly screen that ran around the ­perimeter of the deck. In place of a fireplace on the floor, Dirk Lohan later designed a raised hearth. Air conditioning has since also been installed. The building of a new bridge over the river within sight of the house also led to the rerouting of a road, bring­ing traffic closer to the house.

than outside. More is asked for from nature, because it becomes a part of a larger whole.” 7 1 Ludwig Mies von der Rohe cited in: Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 2012, p. 251. 2 Ibid., p. 258. 3 Ibid., p. 250. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Graeme Shankland in: ­ The Listener, 15 Oct. 1959, p. 621. 5 Peter Eisenman, “The Umbrella Diagram”, in: Ten Canonical Buildings 1950–2000, New York 2008, pp. 50–70. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Dirk Lohan, Manuscript MoMA (translation JR). 7 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Christian Norberg-Schulz, in: Éditions de l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, L’œuvre de Mies van der Rohe, Paris 1958, p. 100.

The building as seen from the present The design of the house is so reductive that it reads almost as a diagram. It is as if all but what is truly necessary has been eradicated, leaving just the structure of the building standing. Although it could have been constructed with much less material, the house still appears to be exceptionally light. By lifting the horizontal planes off the ground, the suspended slabs appear almost to float. This is a feeling one also senses physically. Visitors reach the decks via sets of open stairs, and the lack of a railing lends them the sense of being an extension of the topography. Peter Eisenman has remarked that despite their identical dimensions, the floor slab and roof slab should be read differently in conceptual terms, due to the presence of the lower deck. The travertine paving of the floor slab is perceived as a plinth while the roof slab covers the space like an umbrella.5 Eisenman has described Farnsworth House as an “umbrella diagram” due to the arrangement of the columns outside the plan. He contrasts this with Le Corbusier’s Maison Dom-Ino, also a diagrammatic concept, which employs a sandwich principle of two identical slabs above each other. Le Corbusier’s columns are placed within the plan, emphasising the horizontal continuity of space, while Mies’ columns sit outside and frame the building. At the same time, Mies’ design does all it can to counteract the theme of framing. The columns, which end just below the eaves coping, are not only placed outside of the building but also positioned away from its corners. Philip Johnson’s Glass House, built in 1949, contrasts with this: Johnson’s columns rise to meet with the roof and, more significantly, are placed at the corners, emphasising the cubic geometry of the building but at the same time obscuring its tectonic articulation. Mies distanced himself from the work of his colleague: “He kept on coming here, nos­ ing through all the details and copying them. The mistakes he made in his details are because he didn’t elaborate them, choos­ ing instead to nose around.” 6 Despite the formal rigour and elementary reduction of the house, it is by no means schematic. Not only are the levels arranged asymmetrically to one another, but the entrance to the interior is also shifted slightly to the south of the central axis. Minimalism here is not an end in itself, but a means by which to perceive the context more intensively. This has a spiritual dimension, as Mies describes: “Nature should also live its own life, we should not destroy it with the colors of our houses and inter­ iors. But we should try to bring nature, houses and human beings together in a higher unity. When you see nature through the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it gets a deeper meaning

146

Detail

View of the entrance

Farnswo rt h Ho u se

147

Promontory Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1946–49

Mies’ first realised design for a high-rise building was for a lakeside location and features large windows that afford a panoramic view over Lake Michigan. The lakefront at this point takes the form of a park-like landscape enabling Mies to realise the quintessentially modernist vision of a high-rise tower in a park. The building does not, however, stand alone but completes the existing urban block, resulting in a twin-T-shaped floor plan. This typological arrangement occupies the full width of the site, and because adjacent buildings can be built to the north and south of the build­ ing, these end walls have no windows. On the east side, which faces the lake, the glazing extends across the entire frontage of the build­ing and up to the ceiling of the apartments. The building is divided into three sections: the ground floor with its glazed entrance lobby is set back from the main front­ age of the shaft of the 20-storey building, as is the roof zone. Crowning the building are two protruding volumes that house technical installations, under which is the so-called “Solarium”, a large collectively used room with a glazed front facing the lake. From the lake, the building is perceived as a large rectangular slab raised off the ground by a series of columns, but to the rear on the westward side the building has projecting sections that form a more conventional courtyard elevation. Each of the T-shaped halves of the building functions independently with their own people and goods lifts and own fire escape stairs. Each apartment has two means of access: the main entrance and a second entrance providing direct access to the kitchen. On entering the lakeside apartments, a cupboard serves as a room divider, obscuring a direct view into the living room. Passing through a narrow opening, the view widens dramatically, opening onto the central living area, which leads seamlessly on into the dining area. The floor plans avoid the use of long corridors. The architectonic articulation of the construction is exception­a l. The building is a concrete frame construction with an exposed structural skeleton. Brick infill is used to close off the open ­p anels between the reinforced concrete columns. The vertical elements of the exposed structure are set back slightly every five storeys so that the vertical lines of the columns appear to grow more slender towards the top. This tectonic articulation reflects not only the reduced load requirements of the upper storeys but also represents an exemplary Miesian approach to the design of a high-rise building made of concrete, as his later work went on to show. The construction gives the building its character. By showing the structural system on the surface of the building, it aims to express the honesty and simplicity of its construction. The brick infill masonry is laid in stretcher bond, which demonstrates the non-loadbearing nature of the brick panels. The facing brickwork – which is of the same colour as those of the IIT buildings – is a simple single-leaf stretch of wall, while the inner leaf and the internal dividing walls are made of large-format concrete blocks. The building has been detailed with the utmost precision, which is particularly evident in the entrance lobby and the good condition of the aluminium window profiles. Later alterations to the building As the building has no air-conditioning, some residents started to insert openings in the brickwork panels beneath the windows. By the mid 1960s, Mies was then asked to propose a coordinat­ed positioning plan for the wall-mounted air-conditioning units. Al­ though his plan was gradually put into effect, further openings have since been made that deviate from the regular pattern of the units. Mies later also produced a plan for the remodelling of the ground floor.1 In the 1990s, the ground floor area was changed once again in the course of renovation works on the building.

148

Upper floor plan Ground floor plan

East façade

149

The building as seen from the present Even as the building was still being completed, Mies was already working with the same client, Herbert Greenwald, on another project for two glass-clad high-rise buildings on Lake Shore Drive. In direct comparison, the Promontory Apartments seem much more conventional. Publications from the time initially showed only photos of the lakeside elevation, which make it look like a freestand­ ing slab building. Even though steel was to become Mies’ pre­ ferred building material, this building was nevertheless crucial for the later development of his work. The device of successively stepping back an exposed concrete construction towards the top of the building is used frequently in his later buildings. A further pioneering aspect of the building was the housing cooperative model: “In a ‘co-op,’ apartments are offered as shares in a cooperation that owns and operates the building. Technically, the shareholder leases a unit from the building cooperation.”2 The architect, construction firm and the investor all gained valuable knowledge in high-rise construction from undertaking this project, and this building marked the beginning of further cooperation to come. 1 Cf. Anthony P. Amarose, Pao-Chi Chang and Alfred Swenson, “National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Promontory Apartments”, historic monument report, Chicago 1996, p. 4: “Another change involved the remodeling of the ground floor by creating two mail rooms, one on each side, by taking space from the original bicycle rooms, and converting the north bicycle room into a receiving room. The existing mailboxes in the entrance vestibules would be relocated to the mail rooms. These changes to the lobby were executed circa 1965, largely as shown on the Mies draw­ ing.” (gis.hpa.state.il.us/pdfs/201012.pdf) 2 Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 2012, p. 279.

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View from within looking east Detail of the façade Glazing detail

Corner detail

Pr o m o n tory A part ment s

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Algonquin Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1948–50

The six towers of the Algonquin Apartments are the evolution of an initial plan by Mies. His original design was, however, never executed.1 Together with the architecture firm Pace Associates, Mies’ office developed a set of freestanding towers based on a concrete frame relying on the same technique used for the Prom­ ontory Apartments nearby. Here too the columns are set back every few storeys so that the structural framework appears to grow progressively more slender towards the top. However, ­after the project developer Herbert Greenwald and Mies began to concentrate on another site on Lake Shore Drive, Charles Genther, a pupil of Mies’, assumed a leading role in the planning of the ­Algonquin project with his office Pace Associates. A site plan that shows the six towers eventually built lists both Pace and Mies as the authors of the project. 1 A history of the development of the plan is given in: Franz Schulze (ed.), The Mies van der Rohe Archive, vol. 14, New York, London 1992, p. 8, and: Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, Chicago 2012, pp. 383–385.

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Site plan View from the northwest

Arts Club of Chicago Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1948–51

The project is a conversion of an existing building.1 For Mies, this was a rare situation, but as a member of the club he offered his services free of charge. He created a glazed lobby with a whitepaint­ed steel stair that stands freely like a sculpture in the space. The treads, carpeted in black, lead to the gallery spaces above. Mies designed this lobby in the utmost detail, also selecting the furniture. In the mid-1990s, however, the building was demolish­ed, although the stair itself was able to be saved and was subsequently re-installed in another building. The sculptural object was, how­ ever, originally conceived as part of a sequence of spaces designed by Mies. As with the McCormick House, only the steel con­struction of the original substance was transferred to a new location and what remains is a fragment in a changed context. 1 Cf. Franz Schulze (ed.), The Mies van der Rohe Archive, vol. 14, New York, London 1992, p. 224–225.

Stairs

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860–880 Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1948–51

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Ground floor plan Upper floor plan

View from the northeast

155

The glazed towers on the shores of Lake Michigan give the impression of having been stripped in an act of radical minimalism of all that is unnecessary to leave just the shell of the towers stand­ ing. All one sees of their architecture is the skeleton framework of their structure. The coalescence of architecture and construction makes it possible to glaze the entire frontage of the two towers, providing the best possible illumination of the rooms within and affording their inhabitants the best possible views. This drive for maximum efficiency can also be seen in the use of an especially economical construction method for the extremely expensive plot. With the building of the towers Mies realised a vision that he first formulated in the early 1920s in his first published text: “Only skyscrapers under construction reveal the bold constructive thoughts, and then the impression of the high-reaching steel skel­ etons is overpowering. With the raising of the walls, this impression is completely destroyed; the constructive thought, the necessary basis for artistic form-giving is annihilated. […] The novel constructive principle of these buildings comes clearly into view if one employs glass for the no longer load-bearing exterior walls.” 1 The apartments in the towers were originally conceived as being fully open with the bathroom as the only enclosed room. However, the floor plans that were actually built were for apartments with several rooms: eight small apartments per floor in the northern tower and four larger apartments per floor in the south­ ern tower. A zone of service rooms was arranged around the fixed access core, allowing the division of the living rooms to be v­ aried with lightweight partitioning walls as required. The larger apartments even had a second tradesmen’s entrance. “We use the principle of flexibility“, described Mies. “We cannot help but fix the bathrooms and the kitchens in one place, but otherwise it is quite flexible, we can take the walls out or put more walls in.”2 The possibility of alteration is therefore built in. The two towers are identical volumes placed at 90° to each other. Each of them is raised off the ground and the two are connected at ground level. The two towers are placed on a travertine plateau so that they are perceived as a single entity, despite the fact that their appearance changes with the direction of view. As one moves around the ensemble, the constellation changes with each step: at one point one sees two slender towers, from an­other direction the two façades blend to form a continuous texture. The vertical wide-flange I-beam profiles attached to the exter­ ior of the façade are important elements because they cast shadows, lending the towers a sense of relief and delineation. This effect is heightened as the position of the sun changes. Much like the lesenes of a medieval church, the applied steel profiles structure the walls. As an expression of the verticality of the load dissipation, they also serve a tectonic function. Seen from the side, the “blinker quality”3 of the row of I-beams makes the wall seem monolithic, emphasising the abstract physical quality of the rect­ angular blocks. At the same time the towers look lightweight. For Mies, a pure glass building has the character of a sailing boat.4 The structural frame of the Lake Shore Drive Apartments had to conform to the standards of the high-rise city of Chicago and the building rests on timber pile foundations. Mies had already used a reinforced steel framework for his Promontory Apartments project, although there the buildings were not totally enclosed by glass. In his eyes, it was “nonsense”5 to wrap a reinforced concrete construction in a mantle, but fire safety requirements stipulated that multi-storey steel buildings must have a fire-retardant sheathing. For this reason the steel members of the structure had to be encased in a concrete mantle. The architectonic challenge was to detail the skin of the building in such a way that it communicated the filigree character of a steel building. Mies chose to sheath the concrete mantle with a steel covering and to then apply I-beam girders to the exterior. This ordinary steel profile acquires an ornamental quality when used as a decorative vertical element.

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View from the southeast Views of the outdoor areas

860 Lake Shore Drive View from within looking north

860- 880 L ake Sh o re Dri ve

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“But we are not decorating. This is structure,” Mies is quick to remind us: “Now, first, I am going to tell you the real reason, and then I am going to tell you a good reason by itself. It was very important to preserve and extend the rhythm which the mullion set up on the rest of the building. We looked at it on the model without the steel section attached to the corner column and it did not look right. Now, the other reason is that this steel section was needed to stiffen the plate which covers the corner column so this plate would not ripple, and also we needed it for strength when the sections were hoisted into place. Now, of course, that’s a very good reason, but the other reason is the real reason.”6 Later alterations to the building Because the buildings were experimental prototypes, the con­ structions were not technically mature. The upper pane of the aluminium windows could be opened to allow the residents to clean the windows. However, this mechanism proved problematic, because not only did the tower sway markedly in bad weather, but it also rained into the building.7 In the 1970s, the upper panes were then successfully fixed closed. Mies had proposed an air-condition­ ing and cooling system but this was not installed for cost reasons, resulting in significant climatic problems. The residents began to install their own small air-conditioning units, but these have since been replaced by a central air-conditioning system. The towers were comprehensively renovated in 2009, and the floor paving and glass panes at ground levels were renewed. The building as seen from the present This work of architecture has been enormously influential. The impact of these buildings has changed – and continues to change – the face of cities around the world. For the investor, Herbert Greenwald, the project was a great success and he began to apply this model to other sites and locations. It was not long before Greenwald’s projects accounted for two thirds of the work undertaken at Mies’ office. But compared with the numerous imitations by other architects, and even with Mies’ own later developments, these two towers have a particular poetry about them. The windows are not all of the same size and as the structure of the skel­ eton frame is visible on the exterior, the facades have a rhythmic appearance of wider and narrower openings. In contrast to high-rise buildings that stand directly on the ground or have been placed atop a lower block, the transition between the ground plane and the building has been articulated very carefully. A unique spatial situation has been created with a recessed walkway at ground level that provides sudden views into the distance. This is a space of its own that is especially made to be experienced on foot. This dynamic succession of spaces contrasts with the seemingly pure rationalism of the towers. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Frühlicht, no. 4, 1922, pp. 122–124. English translation in Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 240. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Graeme Shankland in: The Listener, 15 Oct. 1959, p. 621. 3 This expression was used by Peter Carter in: Bauen + Wohnen, July 1961, p. 240. (in: Architectural Design, March 1961). 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in a letter dated 2 July 1928, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 305. 5 Ibid., p. 247. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe cited in: Architectural Forum, Nov. 1952, pp. 94–99. 7 Cf. Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 2012, p. 293.

158 860 – 8 8 0 L ake S h o re Dr ive

McCormick House Elmhurst, Illinois, USA, 1951–52

Robert McCormick, one of the project developers of the Lake Shore Drive Apartments, commissioned Mies to build one storey of the towers at ground level for use as a private residence.1 The prefabricated frame construction was delivered by lorry and erect­ed in two days. Although the floor plan deviates from that of the apartments in Chicago, the detailing of the façades is more or less identical. Visitors enter the building beneath a covered entrance area and find themselves immediately in the living and din­ ing room, through which one reaches the study. The second part of the build­ing contains the kitchen and children’s room. The build­ ing, which McCormick used as a weekend house, was dismantled in 1994 and reerected in the grounds of the neigh­bouring Elmhurst Art Museum. While the steel construction was transferred intact, the building was originally conceived in conjunction with a parklike garden designed by the landscape architect Alfred Caldwell, and this connection no longer exists. The interior fittings were likewise lost during the dismantling of the building. 1 For a detailed history of the building see: Mies van der Rohe – Houses, 2G, no. 48/49, 2008–09, pp. 198–205, and: Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 2012, p. 301.

Floor plan Exterior views

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Greenwald House Weston, Connecticut, USA, 1951–56

The house is based on the same principle as the McCormick House, placing a single-storey of the Lake Shore Drive Apartments at ground level into the landscape. In fact, the house’s façade is made of actual unused elements of the high-rise building’s façade. The entrance leads directly into the central living room, which is flanked on either side by two wood-panelled service cores. Next to the entrance is a freestanding storage cabinet that serves as a divider screening off the bedroom. A second entrance leads directly into the kitchen. A low wall of rough-hewn stone creates a step in the terrain allowing the surrounding woodland to be appreciated from a podium. The house, built for the brother of Herbert Greenwald, Mies’ most important client at the time, was extended in 1959–60 by two bays according to plans by Mies’ office. Later, a further extension and pavilions were added that are grouped around the building.1 The interior was also subsequently altered. 1 For further information on the alterations and additions, see: Paul Gold­ berger, “Modifying Mies – Peter L. Gluck Rises to the Modernist’s Challenge”, in: Architectural Digest, vol. 2, 1992, pp. 72–82.

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Exterior view Interior Floor plan

Commonwealth Promenade Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1953–57

Of the four towers originally planned, only the southern pair was completed. A covered walkway connects the towers with one an­ other and extends out into the neighbouring Lincoln Park. The detailing of the aluminium curtain walling is identical to that of the Esplanade Apartments constructed at the same time. Pivoting sections in the lower part of the window provide ventilation and incorporate a fly screen in the plane of the glazing. Compared­ with the buildings on 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, the concrete con­struction used here made it possible to incorporate an ­extra storey within the same overall building height. In contrast to the standard I-beam sections applied to the exterior of the Lake Shore Drive Apartments, the aluminium profiles used here were develop­ ­ed ­especially for the curtain wall façade. The more pronounced thermal expansion of aluminium, however, made it necessary to include expansion joints that interrupt the continuity of the vertic­ ­al lines at each storey. For Reyner Banham the use of a more lightweight material represented a technical advancement: “It is a material, where a large order implies the ability to name your sections […] a choice of section is as natural in aluminium as is the absence of choice in steel, where the economics of rolling-mill manufacture still make fancy sections pretty well impossible.”1 As a propon­ent of actively employing technical advancements in architecture, Banham regarded the possibilities of detailing with aluminium as “far more elaborate”. 1 Reyner Banham, “Almost Nothing is Too Much”, in: Architectural Review, Aug. 1962, p. 128.

Site plan South façade Window detail

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Esplanade Apartments Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1953–57

The two apartment buildings at 900–910 Lake Shore Drive contin­ue Mies’ series of lakeside buildings. On a site immediately north of the existing towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, Mies planned two further high-rise buildings that adhere to the same urban concept: the buildings are placed as freestanding elements in space and do not align with the massing of the historical urban grain of the city. While the Esplanade apartment buildings also stand on a trapezoidal site, the two buildings are not identical in size. The southernmost of the two buildings is shaped like a monumental slab and the two buildings are placed closer to each other than their counterparts at 860–880. Mies’ client, Herbert Greenwald, paid the highest amount ever paid at that time for a site for residential use in Chicago.1 The consequent need to make optimal use of the site was achieved by significantly increasing the size of the building vol­ umes and by reducing the storey height. A new design for the ceil­ ing construction made it possible to reduce the structural height of the ceilings. This made it possible to incorporate three additional storeys and at the same time to slightly reduce the overall height of the building. Although the fundamental concept of the buildings – that of fully glazed rectangular prisms – is identical to that of their predecessors, technical advances in the few years between the buildings’ construction meant that the construction and the materials used changed. While the buildings at 860–880 were prototypes, the Esplanade Apartments are optimised both technologically as well as economically. The problems revealed by the prototypes were tackled in the second pair of buildings not only by making modifications in detail but also through the choice of a different material. The structural frame is again completely fronted by a glazed skin, but this time the façade is made of anodized aluminium mounted on a concrete frame. The façade itself is articulated as a curtain wall construction, this time with continuous, equally-sized large windows. To resolve the overheating experienced in the earlier buildings, tinted panes and air-conditioning were installed. While the construction was previously left exposed on the façade, the reinforced concrete columns are now set back from the edge of the building to provide a cavity between the columns and the external skin for air-conditioning. The dark grey tint of the glaz­ ing heightens the impression of the curtain wall as an independent element and emphasises the volumetric sculptural quality of the building. For the characteristic vertical mullions applied to the out­er face of the façade, a custom extrusion made of a ­ luminium was now used instead of the continuous lines of steel I-beams used at 860–880, which were made of two standard T-profiles welded together. Because aluminium is more susceptible to thermal expansion than steel, the mullions are separated by small gaps at each storey to accommodate thermal expansion. A low-lying building was constructed to house a car park with a flat roof that served as a communal sun deck. This however, compromises the expansive sense of space at ground level that characterises the earlier buildings as well as the transition from outdoors to indoors, achieved in the earlier building by using continuous uniform travertine paving. The entrance lobby is instead paved with terrazzo flooring while the inner core is clad with marble. The glaz­ ing at ground floor level is partially transparent and partially translucent, transforming the walls into illuminated objects at night. Unlike the buildings at 860–880, lamella can be seen beneath the first floor ceiling that serve as vents for the air-conditioning. Later alterations to the building After the transfer of the apartments into private ownership at the end of the 1970s, many residents made alterations to their apartments, some combining several units into one. The building’s design was, however, conceived to accommodate this kind of flexibility. Since then, the building has been extensively renovated.

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Site plan

860–880 Lake Shore Drive and Esplanade Apartments

163

164

View from the northeast Walkway between the buildings

The building as seen from the present The concept of curtain wall construction as an independent layer hung in front of the loadbearing structure was not only pioneering for Mies’ own work but has shaped the construction of high-rise buildings to the present day. Likewise, the experimental use of aluminium as a building material has also become common practice, especially for the façades of high-rise buildings. Although the Esplanade Apartments lack some of the conceptual clarity and heroic spirit of the towers at 860–880, and are consequently not as famous architecturally as their predecessors, the apartments they contain are more expensive. Despite lacking the minimalist clarity of the earlier buildings, the apartments still enjoy spectacular panoramic views over Lake Michigan and are appointed to a higher technical standard, including better lifts. As such, the apartments have lost none of their original attraction. 1 This was not, however, the only record it broke: “Esplanade was the tall­ est concrete building yet constructed in Chicago, and the first with a flatslab concrete frame. It boasted the city’s first central air-conditioning for a residential tower; one of the first unitized, anodized aluminium curtain walls; and Chicago’s first large-scale use of tinted, heat-absorbing glass.” Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, Chicago 2012, p. 294.

Exterior view

E splanad e A part ment s

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Seagram Building New York, USA, 1954–58

166

Ground floor plan

View from the southwest

167

The slender office tower has a monumental presence on New York’s prestigious Park Avenue. Although the pristine prismatic volume of the building is enveloped by a grid of identical windows, the build­ ing exhibits a tripartite structure in the classical manner: a base zone is formed by raising the building off the ground on columns and creating a glazed entrance lobby, and the shaft of the building is crowned by an opaque section housing the technical services. The office tower is set back from the street by about 30 metres to form an urban plaza, creating a rare open space in the densely built urban fabric of midtown New York. While most build­ings in Manhattan typically fill the entire block creating a contin­uous line of frontages along the street, the setting back of the tower makes it appear like a solitary object when approached from the plaza. Although the building is also stepped and adheres to the block pattern, it presents itself as a freestanding object. On the reverse side, it steps back and aligns with the New York pattern of streets and blocks, which even landmarks in the skyline such as the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Build­ ing were obliged to do. The plaza is so vital to the project that Mies saw it endanger­ed when the client briefly considered placing a bank building on the plaza.1 Paved with granite slabs, containing two shallow pools and flanked by marble bench-like blocks, the plaza represents an essential part of the architecture, functioning as a podium that visitors must cross before they pass through the columns of the entrance lobby. Raised a few steps above the street, the plaza forms a plinth akin to that of a Greek temple and denotes a space set apart from the hustle and bustle of the sidewalk. While the loadbearing structure of the building is steel, the hung curtain wall façade is made of bronze. The bronze tint of the glazing lends the skin of the building a sense of unity. The building employs the same principle of externally applied vertical I-beam mullions that Mies used in his Chicago high-rise build­ ings, however here the mullion profiles as well as the glazing have been custom-fabricated. The wide-flange H-shaped form of the profiles was arrived at through innumerable tests because of what Mies described as its precise interplay of “umbra and penumbra”.2 The delicate relief they lend to the smooth skin of the building causes its appearance to shift as the light changes. The use of especially high-quality materials in the building defines its character. Before visitors even ascend the steps to the plaza, they come into contact with the green marble blocks. When asked for his opinion, the client expressed a particular lik­ing for bronze, and in practice this infrequently used alloy of copper and zinc does indeed have advantages over steel and aluminium. Bronze is corrosion-resistant and less susceptible to thermal expansion than aluminium. The bronze façade echoes the underlying structural skeleton and in some sections the panels between the profiles have been filled with panels of green marble rather than panes of glass. The floor plan is based on a 1.41 metre module and is the product of a combination of ideal office sizes as well as the New York planning laws which stipulated that a tower may occupy a maximum of 25 percent of the floor area of the site. Mies recalls that “since it was to be the first major office building which I was to build, I asked for two types of advice for the development of the plans. One, the best real estate advice as to the types of desirable rental space and, two, professional advice regarding the New York City Building Code.”3 To execute the building, Mies entered into a cooperation with Philip Johnson, about whom Phyllis Lambert, the director of ­p lanning, wrote: “Knowing that Mies’ primary concern was the articulation of structure, form, and material, Philip quickly grasp­ed that Seagram presented an unusual opportunity to improve on many of the standard industrial design elements used in office buildings: doors, elevator cabs, hardware, lighting,

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Views across the plaza Corner detail

View from the northeast Entrance lobby

S eagram B u i l ding

169

plumbing fixtures, and room partitions, as well as lettering and signage […] eventually expanding to include the design of entire office floors, lighting strategies for the whole building. […] Philip used power­ful theatrical effects.” 4 He designed the interiors such as The Four Seasons restaurant and, together with the lighting ­planner Richard Kelly, the design of the continuous illuminated ceilings that at night turned the building into a luminous object. Later alterations to the building The complex has remained largely unchanged to the present day. The planting of weeping willows on the plaza did not survive and was soon replaced by gingko trees. Conversions works were only undertaken in some of the interiors. In 2000, the architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro designed a restaurant in the building. The building as seen from the present Although the building no longer stands as conspicuously as it once did now that the lower-rise buildings in the surroundings have been succeeded by similarly high and abstract towers, the build­ing has lost none of its monumentality. As Mies was design­ing the build­ ing, he had just completed the vast Convention Hall in Chicago which he described as his first building of “really m ­ onumental qual­ ity”.5 Mies’ buildings – like those of Peter Behrens – consistently displayed an immanent sense of monumentality, but Mies was referring here to sheer size: “But, in fact, there is a certain size that is a reality. Take the pyramids in Egypt and make them only 15 feet high. It is nothing. There is just this enormous size that makes all the difference.”6 “As pleasant as the Seagram Building is,” remarked Philip Johnson in 1978, “it’s still a flat-topped glass box, and that we got a little bit bored with.”7 In retrospect, however, the timeless quality of this building has become ever more apparent, especially in comparison to buildings built over the last few decades. A particular quality of the Seagram Building is the many different ways in which it reduces its vast scale to that of the pedestrian. In contrast to the many high-rise tower blocks built since then that offer nothing of benefit to the passer-by, this project created an urban space that continues to be used by the citizens of New York on a daily basis. 1 Phyllis Lambert, Building Seagram, New Haven, London 2013, p. 71. Phyllis Lambert, daughter of the client Samuel Bronfman, had proposed Mies as the architect and oversaw the project as director of planning. 2 Lambert 2013, p. 62. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Cameron Alread and others on 11 May 1960, cited in: Lambert 2013, p. 46. 4 Lambert 2013, pp. 122–123. 5 Ludwig Mies in conversation with Katharine Kuh, in: The Saturday Review, 23 Jan. 1965, p. 22. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 81. 7 Philip Johnson in conversation with Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel (library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/dsva)

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Façade details Detail of the lift

View from the southwest

Seagram B u i l di ng

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Lafayette Park Detroit, Michigan, USA, 1955–58

172

Ground floor plan

The residential project lies on a green, landscaped site just a short distance on foot from the centre of Detroit. The apartments open onto a communal outdoor area that transitions into a public park. Although all the buildings are identical in appearance, the project consists of three different building types: a single-storey court­yard building, two-storey terraced units and high-rise apartment blocks of which initially just one was realised. The fully glaz­ed frontages of the terraced houses open not onto private gardens but look out over the collective green areas. The project replaced a low-income neighbourhood that was considered a slum with a correspondingly high crime rate.1 The total demolition of an entire neighbourhood made it possible to create a new building arrangement that aimed to retain the middle class in the city centre. Much like a collage, this model settlement was implanted into the old fabric of the city. Alongside Mies, who was responsible for the architecture, Ludwig Hilberseimer and Alfred Caldwell were commissioned as urban ­planner and landscape architect respectively. The design of the landscape is a key aspect of the overall concept. The trees, which are now mature, have grown to form a wood and only now provide the much-needed shade to make the fully glazed buildings tolerable climatically. American honey locust trees were planted, which have very small leaves that do not fully shade the ground but produce a dappled light. They provide a natural canopy, their crowns covering the complex and screening the lower buildings from the high-rise apartments. A second level of vegetation, including colourful flowering trees and shrubs such as crab apple and various species of lilac, permeates the rest of the site. Cockspur hawthorn hedges augment the overall composition, dividing the open areas into zones and shielding the interiors from view. The urban concept can only be described as a clean-sweep solution: after the site and all the buildings on it had been clear­ed and the project developer Herbert Greenwald had commissioned his team of architects with the design, Hilberseimer also called for the existing network of streets to be overridden, replacing them with a system of closed-off access roads to create a park in the centre in which a school was located. The intention was to provide pedestrian access to the school without having to cross any roads. Hilberseimer conceived of a mix of buildings in order to create an extensive urban landscape with the high-rise apartment blocks placed far apart from one another. In a somewhat technocratic manner, he called for a “ruralisation of the city” and an “urbanisation of the country”: “If the active forces now concentrated in large cities could be more evenly distributed, activity would be spread through all the country. City and country, coming closer to each other, would influence each other to their mutual benefit, materially and spiritually. Healthy conditions would be restored everywhere. What is pleasant in city life could be combined with the pleasantness of country life. The disadvantages of each way of life would disappear.” 2 Although Hilberseimer oriented the buildings to maximise their solar exposure, Mies refined their arrangement, ordering them in a rhythmic structure. The approach he used to define space is similar in concept to that of the IIT Campus. In contrast to the serial repetition of identical elements, he placed clear rect­ angular volumes in a rigorous orthogonal arrangement to create a dynamic succession of spaces. The four rows of the courtyard houses enclosed by walls are arranged offset from the 17 terraced rows of housing to maximize their view of the natural surroundings. Even the car parking at the end of the closed-off roads was sunk by a metre to remove them from view. In the low-rise buildings, a visual axis always leads straight from the entrance door right through the building. The living areas are screened by hedges, walls and in the case of the

173

courtyard houses through the creation of a raised plateau. Steps lead up to the entrances of these houses. The row houses mean­ while have a cellar with continuous service corridors that also provide access to the heating systems and refuse containers. The apartment blocks look like a continuation of the terraced units but stacked vertically on top of one another. This stacked appearance is a product of the large horizontal window panes that have the character of a panoramic window and offer a view of the skyline of the city and even as far as Canada. This solution was achieved in combination with an unusual treatment of the window profiles: instead of using Mies’ typical vertical I-beam, they consist of two ][-profiles used back to back. Later alterations to the buildings The settlement is operated as a cooperative and the residents are permitted only to make alterations to the interiors. Consequently, the kitchens have most frequently been modified. The most fundamental alteration, however, concerns the renewal of the entire glazing with new thermal glazing with a dark-coloured tint. The architecture as well as the landscaping of Lafayette Park is now listed and subject to conservation regulations. Residents are only able to freely plant an area within one metre of the houses. The vegetation has nevertheless changed as a whole. For example, the system of 1.78 metre high hedges is not as homogenous in appear­ ance as was originally intended.3 The later phases of the project were not realised according to the original plans and a few years later, Mies also designed the Lafayette Towers on an adjacent site. The buildings as seen from the present When Lafayette Park was planned, the city was just beginning to shrink. Since then Detroit has declined dramatically, losing more than half of its original residents. In summer 2013, the city declared bankruptcy. The areas of the city most affected by the exodus into the suburbs were the inner-city neighbourhoods. In this context, past visions for shrinking metropolitan regions are once again becoming relevant. In his 1977 essay The City Within the City, O ­ swald Mathias Ungers made a case for vacating entire u ­ rban districts in order to convert these back into green areas. The result would be islands of city scattered in a sea of park land­scape. Initiatives in this vein are now being discussed for Detroit. While Hilberseimer vehemently argued for the rejection of any kind of density in the city, we are now also aware of its neg­ ative implications. At the same time, anyone who visits Lafayette Park today will experience it as a green oasis. While many simil­ar ­urban renewal projects have failed, this project is still regarded as having been successful. People identify strongly with the park, although few residents are aware of the architect re­ sponsible. The social composition of the residents is mixed and the crime rate is low – even though there are no fences. 1 The predominantly African American neighbourhood of “Black Bottom” was demolished in 1950, but it was years before a project developer was willing to take on the project, despite the availability of state subsidies. For further information on the history of Lafayette Park, see: Charles Waldheim (ed.), Hilberseimer/Mies van der Rohe – Lafayette Park, Munich, ­B erlin, London, New York 2004. 2 Ludwig Hilberseimer, The Nature of Cities; Origin, Growth, and Decline, Pattern and Form, Planning Problems, Chicago 1955, p. 267. 3 The current state of the settlement is documented in: Danielle Aubert, Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani (eds.), Thanks for the View Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit 2012.

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Courtyard house Terraced houses

Views from the gardens

L afaye tte Park

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Pavilion Apartments

Site plan Corner detail

Lafaye tte Park

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Colonnade and Pavilion Apartments Newark, New Jersey, USA, 1958–60

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Site plan Upper floor plan Ground floor plan

The three high-rise slabs are distributed across a site whose fourth wall is the skyline of Manhattan in the distance. The complex lies just 20 minutes by train from New York’s Penn Station and bord­ ers Branch Brook Park, which like Central Park was designed by Fred­erick Law Olmsted. The largest of the three buildings, the 135-metre long Colonnade Apartment Building, directly adjoins the park. The buildings are placed more than 600 metres apart. Mies remarked that, “Modern buildings of our time are so huge that one must group them. Often the space between these build­ ings is as important as the buildings themselves.”1 The buildings could not contrast more with the dense pattern of 19th century buildings that characterised Newark at that time. The comprehensive urban-renewal project aimed to alleviate what was then regarded as unhealthily cramped conditions in the city. The project was part of a nationwide programme of similar initiatives and was undertaken by the project developer Herbert Greenwald with whom Mies worked regularly. For him, the vent­ ure was financially lucrative. The rationalism of the archi­tecture eschews all forms of individual expression and ­makes neith­er reference to local materials or building forms nor ­responds to the historical plan of the city. The architecture of the buildings replicates that of earlier buildings by Mies, for example in Detroit. Mies himself conceded that “if there really is no new way to be found we are not afraid to stick with the old one that we found previously. So, I do not make every building different.” 2 As with his other work, Mies’ architecture nevertheless responds explicitly to the context. The project responds to the incline of the topography, and the slabs of the Colonnade Apartments are raised off the ground atop a large plinth reached by a flight of steps from which one has a view over the site. This enables the ground floor zone to remain open by locating the service and communal spaces – laundry room, offices for the man­ agement and shops – in the plinth. The plinth takes the form of a plateau that extends from the park right through the building. The only fixed points in the ground floor plan are the stair and elevator cores, and the entrance to the two glazed lobbies leads through a forest of columns. The floor plans of the apartments vary and each storey contains a range of different-sized apartments. However, none of the windows can be opened in a traditional sense and their arrangement – there are over 8000 identical windows – is the same regardless of which direction they face. Ventilation is instead prov­ ided by fixed elements at floor level in which the air conditioning unit is integrated. This element also contains flaps for providing natural ventilation. In contrast to the well-illuminated interiors of the apartments, the inner access corridors have no notable architectural qualities. The aluminium façades are a simplified variant of façades developed for past projects. All the components have been design­ed so that they can be handled by a single person and the panes of glass are held in place by neoprene strips. The more this process of simplification progressed, the closer it came to a situation that Mies had prophesied back in 1924: “The work on the building site will then be exclusively of an assembly type, bringing about an incredible reduction of building time. This will bring with it a significant reduction of building costs.”3 Mies argued that the industrialization of the building trades is a matter of materials and called for the development of “lightweight materials”. Years later in 1958 he would declare: “When it becomes economically possible, building will become montage”.4 Ludwig Hilberseimer – who may have inspired the urban concept of the complex – regarded aluminium as a revolutionary advancement: “It is possible that this material may revolutionize the concept of building skins, as it is the least expensive, protects the surface of the reinforced concrete and can be prefabricated in any desired shape.” 5 The architectural critic Reyner Banham

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described the detailing of the aluminium façades as “completely convincing”, especially when compared with the bronze façade of the Seagram Building, which was so elaborate as to be out of “architectural and moral balance.”6 Discussions of the project have posed the question as to whether buildings of such dimensions and forms can still be human. This was felt to be the case as the “spatial organisation and the spatial proportions” communicate “an impression of tranquillity and order.” 7 Later alterations to the buildings The buildings themselves have survived largely unchanged, al­ th­ough some renovations have been made that do not reflect the character of the architecture. Mies’ minimalist balustrade around the plinth of the Colonnade Apartments, for example, has been replaced by a vertically structured fence. The surroundings have, however, changed significantly. At the end of the 1960s the city entered a period of catastrophic decline from which it has yet to fully recover and this has likewise affected the demographic composition of its residents. Many of the surrounding buildings have since been demolished. The buildings as seen from the present It is an experience to walk around the complex. The spatial ges­ ture of the tall slabs raised off the ground is heightened by the abstract form of the buildings. From one of the highest points of the topography, near to a large cathedral, one can see that the Colonnade Apartments have been placed on a ledge in the site in a manner that recalls the Riehl House. While only fragments of the surrounding urban fabric remain intact due to the city’s decline, the park has continued to flourish over a period of more than 100 years. Mies’ buildings meanwhile still stand in their original skin, their windowpanes quivering in stormy weather creating vibrating reflections of the clouds. Few of the white middle class ten­ants for which the apartments were originally built still live here as the surroundings are now regarded as unsafe and run-down, and architecture fans are rarely to be seen. Similarly, the high-rise apartments without balconies are no longer seen as being suitable for families. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Katharine Kuh, in: The Saturday Review, 23 Jan. 1965, p. 23. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964, produced on a phonograph record, Mies in Berlin, Bauwelt. English language source: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1986), in: David Spaeth: Mies van der Rohe, Stuttgart, 1986, p. 11 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Industrielles Bauen” in: G – Material zur elementaren Gestaltung, no. 3, June 1924, pp. 8–13. English language translation in Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 249. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Christian Norberg-Schulz, in: L’œuvre de Mies van der Rohe, Éditions de l’Architecture d’ Aujourd’hui, Paris 1958, p. 100. 5 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mies van der Rohe, Chicago 1956, p. 64. 6 Reyner Banham, “Almost Nothing is Too Much”, in: Architectural Review, Aug. 1962, p. 128. 7 Cf. “Überbauung Colonnade Park in Newark” in: Bauen+Wohnen, July 1961, p. 248. The detailing of the buildings is presented as a progressive solution – elsewhere in the same journal one finds job advertisements from “modern architecture offices” asking for candidates with a “progressive ­understanding of architecture”.

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Pavilion Apartments Colonnade Apartments Plinth of the Colonnade Apartments

View looking northwest Colonnade Apartments

C olonnad e and Pavi l io n A part ment s

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Bacardi Office Building Mexico City, Mexico, 1958–61

Mies had originally designed an office building for Bacardi in Cuba, but the project was abandoned following the Cuban Revolution. Soon after, however, a second project followed for an office build­ ing in the grounds of the Bacardi bottling plant in Mexico City, which Félix Candela had designed as a concrete shell structure. Mies’ building stands in front of the bottling plant and is raised off the ground on columns so as to be visible at eye level from the elevated highway passing the site.1 This decision was, however, anything but economical, especially as much of the usable space had to be sacrificed for the staircase. The two service cores are clad in Mexican mahogany and the floors and the stairs paved with travertine. Despite the two-storey nature of the structure, the 24 steel columns could be left exposed. Curtains and the use of tinted glass provide the only form of protection from the sun. 1 Mies’ explanation was as follows: “The highway is higher than the site. So if we would have built a one-story building there, you would see only the roof. That was the reason that we made a two-story building there.” in: John Peter, The Oral History of Modern Architecture – Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century, New York 1994, p. 172. The building is documented in: Bauwelt, 6 Aug. 1962, pp. 886–888.

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Ground floor plan First floor plan

Entrance façade Corner of the building

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One Charles Center Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 1958–62

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Upper floor plan Ground floor plan

Like the Seagram Building, the floor plan of the tower has a ­T-shaped plan. The detailing and colouration of the façade has likewise been carried over from the Seagram Building, although here anodized aluminium has been used in place of bronze. A new detail was developed for the inner corner of the façades that emphasises the principle of the curtain walling. By allowing the extern­al skin to step back at the corners, a vertical cavity results in the inside corner that is expressed as a negative volume. Following a series of renovations at ground level, some of the original sub­ stance was lost including the replacement of the original entrance situation and the demolishment of an exterior stair beneath the building that bridged the different heights of the sloping terrain.1 1 Cf. Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 2012, pp. 369–370.

Views of the façade showing inner corner

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Lafayette Towers Detroit, Michigan, USA, 1959–63

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Site plan View of the Pavilion Apartments Upper floor plan

The two parallel high-rise slab buildings are identical in arrangement and detailing to the Pavilion Apartments in Newark, New Jersey, that were planned at the same time. Here, though, the build­ings have been placed closer to one another with a car park in between. The construction of the flat part of the building has a continuous opening beneath the ceiling slab reminiscent of Mies’ unbuilt “concrete office building” project from 1923. The roof terrace is designed as a sun deck with a swimming pool. The complex is an extension of Mies’ earlier Lafayette Park estate, the urban planning of which was conceived together with Ludwig Hilberseimer. This second phase was originally also planned as a mixture of single-storey courtyard buildings, two-storey terraced houses and apartment blocks.1 1 Cf. Charles Waldheim (ed.), Hilberseimer/Mies van der Rohe – Lafayette Park, Munich, Berlin, London, New York 2004. For further information on the history of the building’s use: Danielle Aubert, Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani (eds.), Thanks for the View Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit 2012.

Overall complex Swimming pool Parking garage

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Federal Center Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1959–74

1 3 2

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The complex consists of a courthouse, offices and a single-storey post office. The urban concept of inserting a high-rise building and an adjacent plaza into dense urban surroundings, as used previously for the Seagram Building, is extended here to fill a larger site. Two high-rise slabs in the heart of Chicago’s inner city are grouped around a single-storey square “pavilion” to create an extensive outdoor area. In contrast to the deep canyon-like streets of the surroundings, the buildings are perceived as freestanding elements in urban space. The large scale of the complex is appar­ ent throughout, for example in the over eight-metre-high room height of the post office building. Mies is known only to have commented on the project as follows: “We put the buildings so that each one gets the best situation and that the space between them is about the best we can achieve.”1 For him this was a question of proportions. Several different variants of the urban massing were developed. In addition to the asymmetrical arrangement that was eventually realised, a vari­ant with a single tower and one with two identical building slabs arranged parallel to one another were presented. A fourth smaller building was eventually created to house the technical services. The resulting complex represents not only an architectural composition of abstract clarity but also a new urban concept in the city. Although the façade articulation of the two towers is identical, they contain different functions. The 42-storey Kluczynski Building to the south contains offices for various federal authorities, while the slab-like 30-storey Dirksen Building contains courtrooms. The courtrooms, each two storeys high, are arranged above one an­ other in the core of the building and are clad internally with stain­ed walnut panelling. Lacking windows, they are lit by continuous illuminated ceilings made of a suspended aluminium grid of square panels. Offices are arranged next to the windows. Despite the uniform appearance of the exterior, the internal organisation of the building is very complex, with public and private areas kept strictly separate from one another: “The judges’ private elevators connect to underground parking; four special elevators carry prisoners to cells adjoining the courtrooms; jurors use the private corridor, as do judges, lawyers and staff; the public is restricted to the wide corridor serving the courtrooms.”2 Although the two towers are separate freestanding objects, one perceives them as being part of the same complex, their Lshaped arrangement marking out an urban space. Despite the uniformity of the façades, they are vertically structured: the tops of the towers are crowned by a band of opaque panels that encl­ ose the services and plant room, and a similar band wraps around the waist of the taller of the two towers just above a third of the height of the building. Reflections play across the surfaces of the façades as the ambient conditions change, lending the façades a sense of dynamism. The towers are raised off the ground on col­ umns with fully glazed lobbies, creating a sense of spatial continuity at ground level that is further underlined by the continuous paving of the floor. The plaza is paved with grey Rockville granite and this material continues on into the hall of the post office and the lobbies of the high-rise towers. The interior of the post office, which opens completely towards the plaza, was originally planned as a clear-span structure, but the soil conditions were deemed inadequate and the roof of the space is borne instead by four cruciform columns. Two installation ducts clad with green-coloured granite extend from the floor to the ceil­ ing, which like that in Crown Hall is suspended from above. The walls containing the post boxes are likewise clad with granite. Lorry access for deliveries and collections is arranged below ground. Both the structural framework as well as the façade is made of steel. For Mies, this represented an ideal combination, albeit one he was only rarely able to realise. His residential towers were mostly reinforced steel constructions clad with aluminium curtain walling, and he had only once succeeded in combining a steel

Site plan 1 U.S. Post Office 2 John C. Kluczynski Federal Building 3 Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse

View from the west View from the north

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structural skeleton with a steel façade before, namely in his project for the apartment blocks on 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, also in Chicago. Unlike the earlier prototypical project, however, the external skin of the façade does not lie in the plane of the supporting structure but is positioned in front of it. By locating the loadbearing structure within the external skin, it is easier to handle their respective differential thermal expansion because the structural frame and the façade are two separate elements independent of one another. The steel profiles of the façade were welded together on site and painted Mies’ trademark matt-graphite col­ our. The individual window casements were made of dark-colour­ed aluminium with dark-tinted panes of glazing. Later alterations to the buildings While the only alterations made to the buildings concern the arrangement of the interiors, the plaza was extensively renovated from 2010–11 and incorporated some changes. To comply with stricter security regulations for government buildings, granite bollards have been installed in a ring around the towers. As originally intended, further courtrooms have been inserted into the building. Many of the corridors have since been clad with granite and the linoleum flooring has been covered with carpeting.3 Although the complex was first completed in 1974 and was undertaken in conjunction with three other architecture offices – Schmidt, Garden and Erikson, C. F. Murphy Associates, and A. Epstein and Sons – Mies was the design architect for the project. The decision to install Alexander Calder’s “Flamingo”, a bright red steel sculpture on the plaza, was made without Mies who had originally foreseen planting at this spot. The buildings as seen from the present To build the Federal Center, it was necessary to demolish the Chicago Federal Building, a typical neo-classical building with monumental columns and a crowning dome built from 1898–1905. While the previous building clearly communicated its public function, the uniform façades of the high-rise towers offer no indication of what they contain. For Mies, this anonymous character was an ideal: he was so utterly convinced of the universal applicability of his architectural solutions that he applied the same basic architectural vocabulary to business headquarters as he did to residential buildings. Later generations of architects would come to regard this radical uniformity with increasing scepticism. At the end of the 1970s, the architect Philip Johnson commented on Mies’ architecture, remarking: “Another trouble with the International Style was everything looked like a box. A church looked like a box, not like a church. A library didn’t look like a library.”4 With his design for the Federal Center, Mies was able to create a major urban plaza in the city. It is a public space that contributes a special quality to the city. Although numerous buildings now­ adays populating the centre of Chicago were directly inspired by Mies’ architecture, the clarity of expression that characterises the Federal Center remains unparalleled. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 78. 2 Architectural Record, March 1965, p. 132. 3 Detailed information on the alterations made to the building can be found on the homepage of the U.S. General Service Administration: www.gsa.gov. 4 Philip Johnson in conversation with Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel in 1978: library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/dsva.

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Post office hall Post boxes

Dirksen Building

F e deral Cen ter

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Home Federal Savings and Loan Association Des Moines, Iowa, USA, 1960–63

The building is set back from the building line to make space for a public forecourt.1 This area has been paved with granite slabs, in which square sections have been omitted in an asymmetrical pattern and planted with trees. The paving continues on into the interior of the building, where its surface has been polished. Flank­ ing the axially arranged entrance hallway, from which one can see the city through the perimeter glazing, are two service cores with stairs. The large open space is covered by a square upper floor construction that rests on a vast steel frame structure with 18 bays on each side. The resulting grid with a total of 324 panels forms a crowning structural framework that is exposed openly to view. This description can also be applied to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The detailing and division of the perimeter glazing also exhibits parallels with the museum in Berlin. 1 The building is documented in: Peter Carter, Mies at Work, London 1974, pp. 130–131.

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Ground floor plan

Exterior view Interior of the cashier hall

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2400 Lakeview Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1962–63

Situated next to a park, this high-rise apartment building has an almost square floor plan. Although the orientation of the floor plan is barely perceptible, the directionality is emphasised through the placement of the columns and the proportions of the entrance hall. The two steps that lead up to the lobby are articulated as a podium. The complex features a swimming pool shielded by an enclosing wall, as well as central air conditioning, both indications of the high standard of the apartments. The 364 apartments have different arrangements, ranging from floors with one- and two-room apartments to floors with large four-room apartments.1 At times, the natural illumination suffers due to the great depth of the floor plans, especially for the north-facing apartments. The cross-section of the columns of the concrete construction decrea­ ses towards the outer faces and the corners as the loadbearing requirement decreases, although this irregularity is concealed by the uniform-sized aluminium sheathing. 1 Bauen und Wohnen, Apr. 1965, pp. 169–172.

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Ground floor plan

East façade Entrance canopy

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Highfield House Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 1962–64

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Ground floor plan

The apartment building lies in a green suburb of villas north of the Johns Hopkins University on the same street as Mies’ earlier One Charles Center office building some five kilometres away. Although the parkland character of the neighbouring university campus permeates the low-rise neighbourhood in the vicinity, this stretch of Charles Street is flanked by a series of high-rise apartment build­ ings. Highfield House is a fourteen-storey north-south oriented slab that stands raised on columns on a platform arti­culated as an architecturally landscaped garden. One enters the complex from the east. Aside from the supporting columns and the access cores, the ground floor is open affording a view through to the garden beyond. The central section of the building with the entrance lobby is fully glazed, while the remainder is a forest of columns through which one passes into the garden. Enclosed by a perimeter wall the garden is a plateau containing an arrangement of planting beds, benches and clearly proportioned sections of lawn. Two rows of five benches have been placed in front of freestanding glass walls with electric light sources concealed within their frames. During the day they serve as screens while at night they are transformed into freestand­ ing illuminated objects.1 The car parking is arranged below ground. The almost square site has a height difference of five metres descending westwards making it possible for cars to access the parking via a ramp opposite the main entrance. The lower level also houses the commun­al facilities which open onto an interior courtyard with trees and a round swimming pool. This courtyard takes the form of a rect­ angular incision of 2:3 proportions in the middle of the rearward garden, resulting in outdoor areas on two levels. The trees are arranged freely in beds on the lower level and exemplify a principle seen in many of Mies’ buildings from this period in which the buildings were rigidly symmetrical but the vegetation was placed asymmetrically. The building itself is essentially a pristine block with bands of uniformly sized windows that lend it an abstract appearance. The high-rise section of the building is, however, just one part of the overall complex. As with Mies’ earlier houses, the building and the garden form a single composition. The architectonic treatment of the topography makes it a part of the architecture. As with the garden of the Riehl House, a step in the site is articulated as a plinth on which the building stands, raised off the ground on columns. The reinforced concrete construction of the building has been left unclad. As with the earlier Promontory and Algonquin Apartments as well as the residential buildings at the IIT in Chicago, the concrete pillars grow more slender with each storey, stepping back slightly every five storeys as a reflection of the reduction in load. On the ground floor, one can see that the articulation of the skeleton frame structure optimises material usage: the central col­ umns are X-shaped in cross section, while the corner columns are L-shaped and the perimeter columns I-shaped. Advances in build­ ing technology also made it possible to achieve far greater col­ umn spans than in his earlier reinforced concrete buildings. As a result, the horizontal window openings are more elongated than in his earlier buildings. The windowpanes of the fully air-conditioned apartment build­ ing have a dark tint and the window frames are made of blackanodized aluminium, contrasting markedly with the light colour of the concrete framework. The masonry panels beneath the windows further emphasise the horizontality. The form of the windows echoes the elongated overall proportions of the building. This analogy between the proportions of the individual elements and the whole can be seen in other buildings by Mies, for example in the vertical glazing panels of his high-rise towers. The spectrum of materials used in the building ranges from precious wood veneers and travertine stone cladding (for example for the lift core) to untreated facing concrete for the plinth of the

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Façade overlooking the garden Garden

building, which has an uncharacteristically rough surface quality similar to that of brutalist concrete architecture.2 This contrast is also evident in the paving. The paving slabs are made of concrete mixed with coarse gravel aggregate and represent a continuation of the typical materiality of Baltimore’s pavements. The entrance hall is paved with terrazzo flooring made of the same basic gravel, giving the impression that the paving has simply been sanded and polished – as if it were a refinement of an ordinary material. Later alterations to the building The building has changed little since it was built, although many of the apartments have been remodelled, most notably the kitchens, which were designed by Mies’ office and had cupboards clad with wood. The driveway was repaved using stone material from the same source. The electric lighting of the glass walls in the garden is, however, no longer in use and the planting has also changed over time. Originally all three beds in the garden were simply sections of lawn. The building as seen from the present The building was erected just as the population of Baltimore began to decline dramatically, a trend that continues to the pres­ent day. This was a product of the exodus of the middle classes from the city centres to the outlying suburbs that were being built all over America at that time. The architecture of Highfield House responds to this anti-urban development by providing a liv­ing ­environment in green surroundings that is also car-friendly. Mies himself was critical of the developments of the time: “Also, you can avoid the spread of these silly suburban houses. Chicago has thousands of them all over the place. Instead of eating up the land they should have been developed as tall and low buildings in a reasonable way.”3 Ironically, the residential high-rise would later become a model for social housing while monotonous suburban settlements contin­ue to be built today. Highfield House still offers a high standard­­of living and is occupied by predominantly affluent ­residents, although this is more a product of the desirable location­ than of the architectural design of the building. 1 The building is documented in: Bauen und Wohnen, May 1966, pp. 174–176, and in: Franz Schulze (ed.), The Mies van der Rohe Archive – An Illustrated Catalogue of the Mies van der Rohe Drawings in the Museum of Modern Art, vol. 19, London, New York 1992, pp. 230–248. 2 Cf. Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism – Ethic or Aesthetic?, London 1966. Mies’ buildings for the IIT are also documented in this publication. Banham argues that Mies’ use of steel exhibits an honesty of expression ­s imilar to that of Le Corbusier’s use of concrete. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 14, 16 (in: Interbuild, June 1959).

Views of the garden

Highf i el d Ho u se

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Detail of the façade Entrance

North façade

Hi ghf i el d Ho u se

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Social Service Administration University of Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1962–64

As with Crown Hall, one enters directly into an expansive hall, from which twin sets of stairs lead down to a basement level illuminated only by a ribbon of windows beneath the ceiling. The pair of symmetrically arranged stairs also lead up to a mezzanine floor result­ ing in a split-level Raumplan-type arrangement that Mies ­rarely employed. While the two zones at either end have two storeys, the lobby and library that surround the central service core are singlestorey spaces. This arrangement was sufficient for the building to be classed as a single-storey building, obviating the need to firesheath the loadbearing steel construction. As in Mies’ other late work, the wide-flange I beams serve to delineate the façade, but here they are also part of the loadbearing structure. Four such steel I beams are welded together to create cruciform columns.1 1 See Architectural Design, May 1966, pp. 245–250.

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Ground floor plan

Exterior view Staircase

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Meredith Hall Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, USA, 1962–65

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The building occupies an elevated position within the campus complex, which is designed as a landscaped garden. Concrete strips let into the ground surround the building, creating a plateau in the landscape. This frame forms a podium on which the building stands and is reached by flights of steps. Although the depth of the building is significant, the entrances lead towards the light of an internal courtyard in the centre of the building. The different kinds of rooms are clearly separated from one another with the classrooms and offices of the Faculty of Journalism arranged around the external wall, framing the block containing the two auditoria in a U-shape. This central volume is positioned as a freestanding element in space, its full width suddenly becoming apparent as one passes through the building in a manner similar to arriving at the transept of a church.

Ground floor plan

View from the campus grounds Internal courtyard

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Science Center Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 1962–68

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This building houses the science facilities of the university. On the ground floor there are two symmetrically arranged lecture halls, while the upper floors contain laboratories illuminated only by ribbon windows beneath the ceiling. The principle of using I-beams to structure the façade was also applied to structure the monolithic, block-like volume of the building, despite the fact that façade required very little glazing. Only sections of the end elevations of the building are actually fully glazed, affording expansive views over the city and the Monongahela River as the building occupies an elevated position.

Ground floor plan

Exterior views

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Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin-Tiergarten, Germany, 1962–68

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Ground floor plan

Mies was given free reign: not only could he decide which build­ ing he wanted to design and where he wanted to site it but he was also able to circumvent the building regulations. He elected to design a museum for art for a location opposite where he once lived on the banks of the Landwehr Canal, which in the end is ironic­ ally largely inconspicuous. Atop a heavy stone podium, he creat­ ­ed a temple-like hall that crowned the architecture but was not actually the gallery itself. Even when walking around it, one is not aware that it is the plinth that contains the actual gallery spaces. Nevertheless, the entrance is unmistakable, the visitor ascending a broad stair to reach a raised plateau, from which one enters the hall before descending again into the galleries in the basement. The monolithic character of the plinth is strengthened further by the fact that Mies was able to dispense with the prescribed perimeter balustrade. In an interview, Mies relates: “I would not have been inter­ ested had it been any other normal building. That would not have been necessary. There are plenty of architects in Berlin that could have done that. […] Because the site slopes slightly from the new Potsdamer Straße and the new bridge, it was almost a given that we should build a two-storey building in which the low­er part would be the actual museum.”1 From the main entrance one is not at all aware that there are two storeys. The building is reduced to a few archetypical elements, each of which is clearly differentiated from the other and employs very different materials. Elevated above a podium clad with granite from Strzegom, the same material used for the pave­ ments in Berlin, is a vast flat steel roof, with glazed, non-struc­ tural walls spanning between the two. In the interior one can see two ventilation shafts clad with Greek Tinos marble and bronze grilles in the manner of monumental chimneys. From this central hall, visitors are directed downwards via two steep stairs. A more comfortable angle of descent would not have been possible within the rigorous constraints of the structur­al grid, to which every detail adheres. The gallery spaces for the exhibits in the basement open onto a planted garden with sculptures and a water basin. From here, one can see the upper hall again, this time as a pavilion-like crown, while a plant-covered wall lends the outdoor space a sense of cloister-like intimacy. Mies wanted to create “interior courtyards with trees, flowers and sculptures that relate to the exhibition spaces, that is to incorporate the surroundings into the realm of art and vice versa, to create a unity of art and life.” 2 For Mies, the architectural dialogue between interior and exterior had a philosophic­ ­al dimension in the context of art. “The building as a whole as well as its individual rooms should always relate to the real world and be open and connected to it. The connection between art and reality must be irrefutably apparent. The work of art is condensed reality.” 3 Although Mies declared that he did not want a temple as a museum, he describes his work as a “classical solution”,4 as a “building of clarity and rigour […] very much in the tradition of Schinkel”. 5 He states that, “the purpose of such an endeavour cannot be to build a new temple to ‘art’ in which (supposedly) categorical works of culture are to be conserved.”6 Nevertheless, the parallels with classical architecture are readily apparent. The eight firmly clamped “pillars” that support the vast roof of the hall taper towards the top and are crowned by a clearly visible ball joint that represents an abstract capital. The building itself also radiates a sense of static tranquillity: “Museums with an overly strong sense of dynamism,” Mies notes, “distract the viewer.” 7 Later alterations to the building After four decades of use, the building is in need of repair. As polished plate glass is no longer manufactured in such large sizes

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Lower floor plan

in Europe, damaged sections of glazing have been replaced with smaller panes bonded together with silicon joins. The stair balustrades have also been modified. After objections at an early date by the building control authorities, glass panes were inserted into the open balustrades. A handrail was also added to one of the open flights of stairs. Aside from necessary alterations, such as the provision of toilets for the disabled, the building is more or less intact in its original condition. The gallery is due to be refurbish­ed by David Chipperfield Architects. The building as seen from the present An open hall as a space for exhibiting art is not only unusual but can also be understood as the antithesis to the white cube. Mies’ application of a building type that he originally conceived for an office building for Bacardi in Cuba to an entirely different function provoked criticism from those who felt he raised architectur­ ally motivated structural considerations over functional concerns. The architectural historian Julius Posener remarked that “the hall is neither appropriate to its contents – nor are its contents to the hall.”8 This comment was made in response to attempts to come to terms with the openness of the space through the introduction of a system of movable screens. Although this practice continued for some time, the space has since been used increasingly for art installations, reflecting the changing landscape of the art world.9 In this respect, Mies may have been right with his assertion that his concept offered the promise of experimental freedom.10 As rational as the steel construction of the hall may appear, it is quite irrational from the viewpoint of the structural engineer. Stefan Polónyi describes the grid of beams, a 64-fold statically indeterminate system calculable only with the aid of computers, as “a system inappropriate for a steel construction”. He recalls: “It was difficult enough to determine the sequence in which to conduct the welding without the welding seams themselves creating internal tension within the system. The steel plates were first craned into place on the upper surface of the concrete base with a smaller crane. After the complex welding procedure had been completed, with numerous overhead welded seams, the entire structural assembly was raised using 8 masts equipped with hydraulic presses and then laid to rest on the columns that were themselves brought into position during the raising process. The flawed structural concept resulted in the need to produce weld­ed seams with a length of 14 km in total.” 11 The positioning of the columns at the edges of the roof slab was likewise not optimal in structural terms compared with setting them back beneath the roof. For Mies, however, optimal statics were of secondary importance compared with the expression of architectonic clarity. To the eye, the steel construction of the hall appears to have a natural and legible structural logic. The tremendous difficulties involved in developing and constructing the roof are not visible. The building appears light and delicate and does not betray the great effort required to achieve this impression. Because a long, horizontal plane of this size appears optically to sag slightly in the middle, the upper surface of the roof slab is raised by 10 cm in the centre and 5 cm at the corners. The addition of a minimal degree of curvature has been used since antiquity to create the optical impression of straight lines in antique temples: the curvature of the stylobates in the Parthenon measures 11 cm over a distance of nearly 70 metres; in the Neue Nationalgalerie, 10 cm has been used for a distance of almost 65 metres. 1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964, produced on a phonograph record, Mies in Berlin, Bauwelt, Berlin 1966. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Manuscript from 19 Sep. 1960, published in: Yilmaz Dziewior, Mies van der Rohe – Blick durch den Spiegel (Mies van der Rohe – Looking Through the Mirror), Cologne 2005, p. 170. Although Mies is describing his design for a museum in Schweinfurt, this also applies to the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Ne u e N atio nalgaler i e

211

212

Exterior of the hall Interior of the hall

3 Ibid. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in a letter to Werner Düttmann from 26 Feb. 1963, cited in: Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ed.), Berlins Museen – Geschichte und Zukunft (Berlin’s Museums – History and Future Perspectives), Berlin 1994, p. 288. 5 Cf. note 2, p. 135. 6 Cf. note 2. 7 Ibid., p. 171. 8 Julius Posener, “Absolute Architektur (1973) – Kritische Betrachtungen zur Berliner Nationalgalerie”, in: Aufsätze und Vorträge 1931–1980 (Essays and Lectures 1931–1980), Braunschweig, Wiesbaden 1981, p. 247. 9 A study of the use of the building is given in: Imke Woelk, Der offene Raum: der Gebrauchswert der Halle der Neuen Nationalgalerie Berlin von Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (The Open Space. The Utility Value of the Hall at the New National Gallery Berlin by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), Dissertation TU Berlin 2010, as well as: Joachim Jäger, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin – Mies van der Rohe (The New National Gallery in Berlin – Mies van der Rohe), Ostfildern 2011. 10 Mies explains: “In Berlin, we split the museum building into two sections: the museum itself and the gallery spaces, except that the hall is much larger and made of glass so that one can look out in all directions and it establishes a connection with outdoors. […] The hall in Berlin is so large and no doubt it will present difficulties as an exhibition space as well as for the person organising the exhibits. That I am fully aware of, but the space offers such great potential that I simply couldn’t take these difficulties into consideration.” This quote is taken from the documentary film that Georgia van der Rohe made about her father in 1986. 11 Stefan Polónyi, … mit zaghafter Konsequenz – Aufsätze und Vorträge zum Tragwerksentwurf 1961–1987 (... with Gentle Determination – Essays and Lectures on Structural Design 1961–1987), Braunschweig, Wiesbaden 1987, p. 98f.

Ground level Stairs Lower level

Ne u e Natio nalgaler i e

213

214

Sculpture garden Outdoor stairs

Sculpture garden

Ne u e Natio nalgaler i e

215

Toronto-Dominion Centre Toronto, Canada, 1963–69

216

With this urban intervention, Mies changed the centre of Toronto. The complex consisting of two high-rise towers and a single-storey bank building was realised in the heart of the city by grouping together several plots. In the financial district just south of the old town hall, buildings were demolished to create a large building site which was formed into a single plateau. The new build­ing vol­ umes are arranged freely on this plateau without paying regard to the historical plan of the city. As with the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in which the incline of the site is used to conceal a full storey, Mies created a granite-paved plinth reached by a mon­ umental flight of stairs. In both projects, the plinth houses many of the principal spaces without being visible from outside. In Toronto, the plinth houses an artificially illuminated shopping concourse and a cinema. This platform in the terrain is articulated architectonically as a “mound” belonging to the ground and differs markedly in its construction and materials from the steel and glass buildings that stand on it. The design for what was to be the tallest building in Canada was originally going to be undertaken by Gordon Bunshaft, but on Phyllis Lambert’s recommendation Mies was invited to contribute. He ended up producing designs for the entire complex, which was then realised in conjunction with the Canadian offices of John B. Parkin Associates and Bregman + Hamann Architects.1 The successively completed buildings of the 56-storey Toronto Dominion Bank Tower (1967), the single-storey customer service hall of the bank and the 46-storey Royal Trust Tower (1969) together form a coherent ensemble which despite their asymmetric­ placement relate clearly to one another. The taller of the two towers is connected by a walkway to the single-storey pavilion creating an L-shaped figure that encloses a plaza. The connecting walkway is, however, designed in such a way that both building volumes ­retain their autonomous character and are perceived as freestand­ ing objects. The two towers stand with their narrow ends facing the customer service hall of the bank. As with Mies’ other buildings, the vegetation is conceived as part of the overall architectural composition. Together with the landscape architect Alfred Caldwell, Mies placed trees in an asymmetrical pattern of recesses in the paving and integrated grass lawns into the stone plinth. As a result the urban block provides not only a public plaza but also an abstract natural land­scape. The ­design of the outdoor areas is a fundamental part of the architecture, knitting together the plinth and the pavilion that sits on it. The result is a balanced contrast between the sculptur­al mass and weight of the podium and the slender lightweight impression of the wide-span steel structural frameworks that extend high up into the sky. As in Berlin, the two monumental service ducts in the square hall are clad with Greek Tinos marble, and visitors familiar with the Neue Nationalgalerie will have a déjà-vu experience on entering the bank. A further similarity between the buildings is the large column-free universal space covered by a grid of steel roof trusses. The advantage of this method, which required the utmost precision, is the low self-weight and construction depth of the roof structure; its disadvantage the high assembly costs, which Mies was nevertheless willing to accept in order to achieve the de­sired impression of lightness. He declared, “we have steel. I think that this is a fine material. By fine, I mean it is very strong. It is very elegant. You can do a lot with it. The whole character of the build­ing is very light. That is why I like it when I have to build a building in a steel construction. What I like best is when I can use stone on the ground.”2 Like Corbusier, Mies regarded the George Washington Bridge as the best structure in New York and he was obsessed with find­ ing constructions that were adequate expressions of the material employed. Because steel is able to achieve greater floor spans, he developed a wide-span steel structure that he continually strove

Floor plan of the bank building

3 1

2

Detail of the façade

Site plan 1 Royal Trust Tower 2 Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower 3 Toronto-Dominion Banking Pavilion

217

218

Detail of the plaza Interior of the bank building

to improve. In contrast to his high-rise buildings, which in his later works were largely variations of an obligatory skeleton framework, the column-free halls provided an opportunity to demon­ strate new solutions. While in Crown Hall the steel members span in one direction and the roof of the Neue Nationalgalerie rests on eight articulated bearing points, the structural grid in Toronto is rigidly welded to sixty columns around the perimeter. As in Berlin, the cruciform columns are made of an assembly of four T-profiles but while the “columns” in Berlin bear just the structural load, those in Toronto must also sustain the bending moment. The col­ umns also hold the frames of the glazing and together with the roof form a single framing enclosure. The abstraction of the architecture is such that the building is perceived purely as structure.

1 Phyllis Lambert, “Punching Through the Clouds: Notes on the Place of the Toronto Dominion Centre in the North American Œuvre of Mies”, in: Detlef Mertins (ed.), The Presence of Mies, New York 1994, pp. 33–49. 2 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation in 1964, in: Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2006, p. 72. 3 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe cited in: “Only the Patient Counts – Some Rad­ ical Ideas on Hospital Design”, in: The Modern Hospital, 1945, pp. 65–67. 4 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Graeme Shankland, in: The Listener, 15 Oct. 1959, p. 622. 5 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with John Peter in 1955, transcription of the interview, pp. 14–15, Mies Archive, New York.

Later alterations to the buildings The complex has been comprehensively renovated and upgraded to meet modern ecological requirements without impacting on the external appearance of the buildings. In 2012, the roof of the bank pavilion was planted with a green roof. The numerous alterations in the interior of the high-rise towers were foreseen as part of the original concept. The wide column spans achieved for the towers afford particular flexibility in the layout of the interior. Changes have also been made in the subterranean levels but here too the original character still prevails. Nevertheless, the constellation of the original complex created by Mies is no longer immediately recognisable as it is obscured by later buildings in its immediate context. The buildings as seen from the present Modern-day visitors to the Toronto-Dominion Centre, in which over 20,000 people work, will find it hard to make out the original buildings by Mies among the new towers that have since arisen around the centre as the new buildings employ similar façade designs. Even the design and materiality of the entrance lobbies echoes those of the original. However, when compared with the later additions, the two original towers are more elegantly proportioned. On their long sides, the elevations have a proportion of 1:3. While the floor plan of one building is eight bays long and the other seven, the height difference is such that both towers have the same proportions. Mies’ architectural system also employs analogous proportions at large and small scales. As such, the windows also have a proportion of 1:3. In retrospect it is not the structural system of the single-storey pavilion that anticipates future developments but the vertical urban design. While the underground shopping systems have devel­oped into extensive networks in many Canadian cities, the anonym­ous character of high-rise offices, which for Mies represented an ideal, now characterises cities around the world. “Our cities are monstrosities,”3 said Mies, but unlike Le Corbusier he was under no illusions that he could solve the urban “chaos”, as he called it, by developing plans for entire cities. “I am sure that the economic situation will have a great influence great influence on the way our cities will be.“ I do not believe that we architects can just plan a city out of the blue sky. There are economic forces so strong we cannot change them. They can be guided, that is about all.”4 Mies’ vision of an urban landscape with a loose arrangement of towers and pedestrian qualities at ground level has survived as a fragment in amidst the dense accumulation of ubiquitous highrise tower blocks. “There are, in fact, no cities any more […],” he declared prophetically given the shape of today’s global urban growth, “it goes on like a forest […] that is the reason why we cannot have the old cities any more […] that is gone forever […]­ planned city and so on. […] We should think about the means […] that we have to live in a jungle.”5

Corner detail of the bank building

T or on to - D o m in io n Cent re

219

Westmount Square Montreal, Canada, 1964–68

As with the Federal Center in Chicago and the Dominion Centre ­in Toronto, Westmount Square is a complex of high-rise towers group­ed around a low building. Here too a pedestrianized urban plaza has been created, with car parking relegated below ground. The entire complex was given a uniform visual treatment with travertine paving for the floor and identical façades that group the different buildings into an ensemble. Like the other two building complexes, the urban configuration of the buildings contrasts mark­edly with its surroundings, making it look as if it has been implanted in the old city. In Montreal, this contrast is all the more striking because the complex is not located in the downtown area but at the edge of a residential quarter of predominantly smallscale buildings.1 The architecture does, however, respond to its surrounding context. The low building, which in this case is not a large open hall but a two-storey office building, mediates between the highrise towers and the surrounding buildings. The flat volume of the office building extends over the edge of the plinth of the plaza on which the buildings stand, giving it the impression of having a three-storey street frontage on the Rue Ste-Catherine – matching the height of the buildings on the opposite side of the road. Compared with the Federal Center and the Toronto-Dominion Centre, the spatial structure of Westmount Square is more complex. A system of different stairs connects the different levels, and the new buildings do not occupy the entire urban block as some of the old buildings remained. Mies began with his obligatory strat­ egy of creating a plinth on which the buildings can be freely arranged. The plinth houses a shopping mall that links to a metro station and underground cinema. This mix of different functions within a building of uniform external appearance continues in the high-rise towers. Although the articulation of the façades is identical, one of the towers contains offices while the other is residential. The multifunctional programme did not, however, lead to a hybrid building typology or to a megastructure, a concept that was being propagated in this city at the time. At the Montreal World Expo in 1967, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto, Moshe Safdie and others called for greater architectural mobility.2 Mies, how­ ever, stuck to his conviction that maximum flexibility is best achieved through an open floor plan with a regular grid of columns as the only fixed points. He and his office therefore concentrated on the proportions of the building volumes and their disposition on the site, the detailing of the façades and the design of the public spaces, leaving the question of their internal arrangement to a local architectural firm.3 The units were marketed as luxury apartments with state-ofthe-art kitchens, airconditioning and a swimming pool. The uppermost apartments have internal courtyards and the lifts transport residents directly to the underground shopping gallery with French delis, restaurants and boutiques. In advertisements and the press, the complex was described as a “city within a city”.4 Later alterations to the building At the end of the 1980s, extensive conversion measures were undertaken. Glass balustrading was added to the plinth and the original travertine paving was replaced with granite slabs. To better illuminate the shopping mall below, roof lights were inserted into what were previously water basins, so that the plaza is now also experienced as a roofscape. The black anodized aluminium elements on the facades have been painted over. The building as seen from the present The underground shopping mall, reached via escalators and clad entirely with Italian travertine panels, is no longer as exclusive and luxurious as it once was. Many of the replaced paving slabs on the plaza have since cracked and the surroundings have also changed. The original relationship between the architecture and

220

Site plan

The plaza Pavilion

221

222

High-rise towers Pavilion

its surrounding environment is no longer legible as new high-rise buildings have since been built around it. The low building therefore no longer serves the mediating role it used to. The original fabric of the complex has not been cared for with the same degree of attention as other Mies buildings, and it has also received little attention from scholars of Mies, who have been hesitant in attributing the project to Mies. In most books on Mies, the complex is not mentioned and even in one of the most recent publications, Mies’ role is quoted as being that of a “consultant” so that the building “reads today almost as a Mies knockoff”.5 1 The contrast is shown clearly in: Peter Carter, Mies van der Rohe at Work, London 1974, p. 142. 2 Cf. the chapter “Megacity Montreal”, in: Reyner Banham, Megastructure – Urban Futures of the Recent Past, London 1976, pp. 104–127. 3 Mies cooperated here with the architecture office of Greenspoon, Freedlander, Dunne, Plachta and Kryton in Montreal. See: “Mies in Montreal”, in: L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Paris Jan./Feb. 2004, p. 108; and Alvin Boyarsky, “End of the Line”, in: Architectural Design, vol. 3, 1970, p. 157. 4 Leo MacGillivray, “Westmount Square ‚City-in-City”, in: The Montreal Gazette, 31 Jan. 1968, p. 36. 5 Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe – A Critical Biography, Chicago, London 2012, p. 348.

Ensemble of high-rise buildings

Wes t mo u nt Sq u are

223

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library Washington, D.C., USA, 1965–72

Precisely twice as long as it is deep, the building is symmetrical about its transverse axis. Visitors entering the building arrive at the reception desk positioned exactly in the centre of the complex, from which they can see almost the entirety of the over 100-metrelong building. The central hall formerly provided the space for the library’s card catalogue. The two ground-floor reading rooms with stacks, located to the sides of the central hall, are fully glaz­ed. While the service rooms are arranged in four cores, the serviced spaces are conceived as one entirely open “universal space”. To the rear of the building is a delivery bay with ramp. The building was completed after Mies’ death and still exists in its original condition, although fundamental alterations are in discussion.1 1 A proposal for the redesign of the library by the Dutch architecture ­office Mecanoo in conjunction with Martinez + Johnson was selected in ­F ebruary 2014.

224

Ground floor plan

Corner detail Entrance hall Reading room

225

Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas, USA, 1954–58, 1965–74

The project for the MFAH is an extension to an existing building. Mies continued the fan-shaped structure of the complex in two separate phases, creating a curved façade that follows the path of the road. The existing courtyard was initially the site of the size­ able Cullinan Hall, completed in 1958. However this white-painted steel façade was later taken down and replaced by a second extension, the Brown Pavilion, designed by Mies and built from 1965–68 after his death. Visitors reach the different open gallery levels via a centrally placed entrance in the still curved but now black-painted new façade. The gallery levels are each offset by half a storey, providing diagonal views deep into the building. Through the curved glass wall, visitors have a panoramic view northwards of the world outside.1 1 Cf. Éditions de l’architecture d’aujourd’hui, L’œuvre de Mies van der Rohe, Paris 1958, pp. 76–77.

226

Site plan Brown Wing

Exterior views of the Brown Wing

227

Nuns’ Island Apartments Montreal, Canada, 1966–69

The three apartment buildings are situated on an island in the St. Lawrence River a short distance from the centre of Montreal. The development of the island only began in the 1960s and Mies was able to position his slab-like apartment buildings close to the water’s edge in a park-like landscape. Like Highfield House in Baltimore, the buildings are made of concrete and here too the exposed loadbearing structural frame steps back slightly at intervals towards the top of the building. This, however, was the first time that Mies incorporated balconies into high-rise buildings. As with the service station nearby, he cooperated with local architecture offices.1 David Cronenberg later used the buildings as the setting for his film Shivers. 1 The two facing buildings were built together with Edgar Tornay and the building that stands to one side with Philip D. Bobrow.

228

Site plan showing the riverbank

North building South building

229

IBM building Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1966–72

For the high-rise office building overlooking the Charles River, a new curtain wall system was developed that in terms of appear­ ance is typically Miesian but is better insulated than his previous facades.1 Using dark anodized aluminium elements and tinted insulated glass panels, the walling system incorporated a continuous layer of insulation. A dedicated weather system on the roof was linked to a computer-controlled air conditioning system developed by the participating engineering office, C. F. Murphy. The rooms could be heated and cooled individually according to their orientation and the position of the sun. Not only were the technical installations pioneering in their day, but the façade system proved to be more reliable with respect to ongoing maintenance than the earlier façade designs. Despite the space constraints in downtown Chicago, the building was set back from the waterfront to create a public space. 1 For further details on the planning of the building, see the description by the project participant Rob Cuscaden in: “The IBM Tower: 52 Stories of Glass and Steel on Site that Seemed ‘Almost Non-Existent’”, in: Inland Architect, July 1972, p. 10.

230

Upper floor plan

South façade Entrance hall

231

111 East Wacker Drive Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1967–70

232

The 30-storey tower block on the Chicago River is part of an extensive urban development project, the Illinois Central Air Rights Development. A second tower was built from 1970–72 by the architecture practice Fujikawa Conterato Lohan & Associates, the direct successor to Mies van der Rohe’s office. Both towers have a typical curtain wall façade and together form an ensemble of buildings united by a base level containing shops that also served as an upper pedestrianized level reached via steps. A street even passes beneath the second of the towers. During renovation works in 2011, the original surface paving was removed and replac­ed with smaller-scale paving.

Site plan

Detail of the façade Entrance hall

233

Service Station Montreal, Canada, 1968

The building consists of different volumes covered by a sailing roof. Although the roof plane appears to rest on a masonry block, the walls and roof are actually separate constructions, with the steel roof supported by twelve columns. A glazed volume housing the sales area and a masonry block containing the repair workshop stand opposite one another, framing a space in-between for the petrol pumps and the central attendant’s booth. The petrol station is located on the Île des Sœurs (Nuns’ Island) in the vicinity of other buildings designed by Mies and remained in use until 2008. The purity of its construction awakens at times associations with Japanese temples, a view of nature opening up from beneath a large protective roof. The petrol station has since been converted into a community centre. While the steel roof was restored to its original condition, the spaces beneath were adapted to suit their new requirements. 1 The conversion was undertaken by the architect Eric Gauthier. The original building was designed by Mies’ office in collaboration with the archi­t ect Paul H. Lapointe. For further information, see “Master Architect Designs Unique Station” in: The Montreal Gazette, 21 Sep. 1968, p. 47.

234

Floor plan

Views from the south

235

Subject Index abstraction 10, 68, 72, 95, 106, 126, 139, 156, 170, 188, 197, 209, 216, 219 aluminium 8, 82, 118, 148, 161, 162, 165, 168, 179, 180, 185, 188, 190, 194, 197, 220, 230 brick 10, 28, 37, 39, 45, 48, 50, 54, 56, 57, 64, 66, 68, 72, 80, 81, 90, 96, 101, 106, 110, 111, 118, 120, 121, 124, 126, 127, 136, 138, 148

green space, greenery 23, 50, 104, 112, 173, 174, 199 grid 94, 104, 106, 112, 115, 122, 126, 130, 138, 168, 188, 192, 209, 211, 216, 219, 220 hall 13, 16, 18, 20, 25, 39, 41, 45, 62, 63, 68, 82, 84, 90, 96, 98, 101, 112, 115, 117, 128, 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 188, 190, 192, 194, 199, 202, 206, 209, 211, 213, 216, 219, 220, 224, 231, 233

brick bond, masonry bond 37, 45, 48, 52, 55, 56, 57, 68, 72, 90, 96106, 127, 138, 148

landscape 10, 20, 28, 37, 45, 50, 56, 58, 64, 68, 80, 82, 84, 90, 94, 96, 104, 142, 148, 160, 173, 174, 197, 204, 216, 219, 228

cladding, facing, panelling 16, 18, 45, 48, 60, 68, 72, 94, 96, 101, 106, 111, 120, 121, 127, 136, 137, 138, 142, 148, 168, 188, 197

light 9, 10, 16, 40, 50, 68, 72, 80, 84, 90, 130, 132, 168, 170, 173, 197, 199, 204

colour 23, 50, 55, 63, 76, 80, 82, 84, 121, 142, 146, 148, 174, 185, 188, 190, 197

module 50, 104, 112, 115, 126, 130, 138, 168

concrete 10, 41, 50, 70, 82, 108, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119, 122, 123, 126, 129, 132, 136, 140, 150, 152, 154, 158, 160, 163, 164, 182, 184, 189, 192, 196, 199, 201, 206, 230

monument 8, 25, 28, 35, 43, 45, 57, 58, 82, 124, 162, 168, 170, 209, 216 movement 20, 23, 27, 56, 60, 68, 76, 93, 106, 110, 118, 132, 156, 211

context 8, 9, 58, 62, 80, 82, 96, 101, 104, 146, 153, 179, 209, 219, 220

panorama, panoramic view 16, 20, 23, 56, 58, 82, 96, 148, 165, 174, 226

core 9, 35, 41,60, 115, 137, 143, 156, 160, 162, 179, 182, 188, 192, 197, 202, 224

plinth 16, 27, 33, 45, 48, 50, 58, 90, 104, 110, 115, 122, 124, 127, 146, 168, 179, 180, 197, 209, 216, 220

corner 20, 23, 25, 37, 42, 48, 50, 56, 58, 63, 68, 76, 80, 90, 93, 94, 96, 106, 108, 111, 114, 115, 117, 118, 122, 124, 134, 138, 141, 142, 146, 151, 158, 168, 169, 177, 183, 185, 194, 197, 211, 219, 225

podium 23, 28, 33, 45, 76, 160, 168, 194, 204, 209, 216

detailing 10, 23, 25, 28, 48, 49, 50, 55, 61, 68, 84, 90, 95, 110, 115, 118, 120, 122, 124, 134, 136, 146, 148, 153, 158, 159, 161, 162, 180, 185, 187, 192, 209, 220 exhibition, exposition 13, 25, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 72, 76, 80, 81, 84, 90, 94, 130, 133, 168, 193, 199, 209, 211, 213 flexibility 58, 104, 117, 132, 156, 219, 220 function 16, 18, 23, 25, 37, 55, 61, 86, 93, 106, 117, 126, 132, 168, 188, 211, 220 furnishing, furniture 10, 16, 58, 62, 82, 84, 132, 153 armchairs: 62, 82; chairs: 16, 76, 82; cupboards: 45, 72, 142, 146, 148, 199; tables: 16, 23, 62, 76, 82, 132 gesture 16, 18, 28, 30, 55, 64, 82, 84

236

proportion 10, 13, 18, 20, 23, 30, 32, 35, 41, 43, 45, 50, 54, 90, 93, 104, 106, 111, 113, 115, 124, 180, 188, 194, 197, 219, 220 reconstruction 10, 18, 20, 30, 32, 33, 43, 55, 60, 64, 76, 80, 84, 94, 95, 101, 118 renovation, conversion, alteration 10, 18, 20, 22, 27, 28, 37, 40, 43, 48, 49, 55, 60, 64, 66, 72, 80, 84, 93, 96, 101, 110, 117, 124, 132, 134, 146, 148, 153, 156, 158, 160, 162, 168, 170, 174, 180, 185, 190, 199, 209, 211, 219, 220, 224 232 rhythm 50, 58, 90, 104, 132, 158, 173 sculpture 20, 23, 27, 56, 58, 68, 72, 76, 77, 84, 94, 153, 162, 190, 209, 214, 215, 216 silk 63, 68,82, 84, 90, 93, 124, 142 skeleton frame construction 10, 58, 80, 81, 90, 115, 121, 138, 148, 156, 168, 190, 197, 219

spatial arrangement, concept, constellation 9, 18, 23, 27, 39, 48, 50, 60, 63, 64, 72, 76, 82, 86, 93, 96, 123, 124, 130, 140, 158, 180, 188, 220

Illustration Credits All photographs and drawings by Carsten Krohn

spatial continuum, sequence of spaces 25, 62, 64, 84, 124, 153 stairs 10, 16, 18, 20, 29, 30, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 50, 55, 60, 72, 76, 80, 82, 90, 92, 93, 101, 110, 115, 117, 118, 119, 121, 130, 131, 132, 134, 136, 146, 148, 153, 179, 182, 185, 192, 202, 203, 208, 209, 211, 213, 214, 216, 220 steel construction 43, 58, 60, 68, 72, 76, 80, 82, 90, 95, 106, 110, 112, 115, 118, 120, 121, 126, 130, 132, 137, 139, 142, 146, 150, 151, 156, 158, 159, 162, 168, 182, 188, 190, 192, 199, 202, 211, 216, 219, 226, 230, 234 stone 10, 57, 64, 76, 80, 84, 121, 160, 197, 199, 209, 216 granite: 168, 188, 190, 192, 209, 216, 220; marble: 18, 45, 76, 80, 130, 162,168, 209, 216; onyx: 76, 80, 82, 84; shell limestone: 35; travertine: 33, 45, 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 124, 130, 142, 146, 156, 162, 182, 197, 220 supporting structure, load-bearing structure 10, 18, 23, 45, 58, 60, 68, 72, 81, 82, 94, 106, 111, 115, 120, 130, 132, 138, 142, 165, 169, 190, 202, 209, 219, 228, 234 tectonics 8, 18, 23, 72, 80, 82, 86, 93, 96, 132, 146, 148, 156 terrace 16, 20, 28, 33, 39, 40, 42, 45, 48, 56, 58, 64, 68, 82, 86, 87, 88, 96, 173, 174, 187 topography 18, 28, 30, 33, 58, 146, 179, 180, 197 type, typology 16, 18, 30, 35, 45, 90, 106, 110, 132, 148, 168, 173, 202, 209, 220 unity, entity 23, 30, 80, 104, 120, 133, 146, 168, 209, 58, 72, 80, 156 urban planning 13, 50, 58, 93, 104, 126, 138, 140, 162, 168, 173, 174, 179, 180, 187, 188, 190, 216, 219, 220, 232 view (to the exterior) 16, 20, 23, 25, 28, 32, 37, 42, 45, 56, 59, 68, 82, 84, 96, 101, 130, 142, 146, 148, 156, 158, 165, 173, 174, 179, 197, 206, 226, 234 visual axis 20, 32, 37, 39, 41, 45, 96, 104, 146, 173, 224 volume 27, 28, 37, 41, 50, 58, 68, 72, 90, 93, 96, 104, 106, 115, 118, 126, 139, 140, 146, 156, 162, 168, 173, 185, 204, 206, 216, 220, 234 water 25, 27, 28, 45, 76, 81, 96, 101, 142, 209, 220, 228, 230

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Chronological Bibliography (organised by original editions)

Martina Düttmann (ed.), Mies van der Rohe – Die neue Zeit ist eine Tatsache, Berlin 1986

Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1947

Sandra Honey and others, Mies van der Rohe – European Works, London, New York 1986

Max Bill, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Milan 1955 Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Less is More, Zurich 1986 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mies van der Rohe, Chicago 1956 Éditions de l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, L’œuvre de Mies van der Rohe, Paris 1958 Peter Blake, Mies van der Rohe – Architecture and Structure, ­Harmondsworth 1960

Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Umgang mit Raum und Möbel, Aachen 1986 Arthur Drexler (ed.), The Mies van der Rohe Archive, New York 1986–1993

Arthur Drexler, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1960

Rolf Achilles, Kevin Harrington and Charlotte Myhrum (eds.), Mies van der Rohe – Architect as Educator, Chicago 1986

Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – The Art of Structure, ­London 1965

John Zukowsky (ed.), Mies Reconsidered – His Career, Legacy and Disciples, New York 1986

James Speyer, Mies van der Rohe, Chicago 1968

Ajuntament de Barcelona, El Pavelló Alemany de Barcelona de Mies van der Rohe, 1929–1986, Barcelona 1987

Martin Pawley, Mies van der Rohe, London 1970 Peter Carter, Mies van der Rohe at Work, London 1974 Lorenzo Papi, Mies van der Rohe, Florence 1974 Juan Pablo Bonta, An Anatomy of Architectural Interpretation – A Semiotic Review of the Criticism of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, Barcelona 1975 Dirk Lohan, Farnsworth House, Tokyo 1976 Wolfgang Frieg, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Das europäische Werk (1907–1937), Diss. University Bonn 1976 Ludwig Glaeser, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Furniture and Furniture Drawings from the Design Collection and the Mies van der Rohe Archive, New York 1977 David Spaeth, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – An Annotated Bibliography and Chronology, New York 1979 Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Furniture and Interiors, ­London 1982 (Stuttgart 1980) Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Principles and School, Basel, Berlin, Boston 1981 Wolf Tegethoff, Mies van der Rohe – The Villas and Country ­Houses, Cambridge MA 1985 (Krefeld, Essen 1981)

William S. Shell, lmpressions of Mies – An lnterview on Mies van der Rohe: His Early Chicago Years 1938–1948, Chicago 1988 Elaine S. Hochman, Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich, New York 1989 Arnold Schink, Mies van der Rohe – Beiträge zur ästhetischen Entwicklung der Wohnarchitektur, Stuttgart 1990 Franz Schulze (ed.), Mies van der Rohe – Critical Essays, Cambridge MA 1990 Josep Quetglas, Fear of Glass – Mies van der Rohe’s Pavillon in Barcelona, Basel, Boston, Berlin 2001 (Montreal 1991) Fritz Neumeyer (ed.), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Hochhaus am Bahnhof Friedrichstraße: Dokumentation des Mies-van-der-RoheSymposiums in der Neuen Nationalgalerie, Berlin 1993 Jean-Louis Cohen, Mies van der Rohe, Paris 1994 Detlef Mertins (ed.), The Presence of Mies, Princeton 1994 Helmut Erfurth and Elisabeth Tharandt (eds.), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Die Trinkhalle, sein einziger Bau in Dessau, Dessau 1995 Gabriele Waechter (ed.), Mies van der Rohes Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Berlin 1995

Franz Schulze, Mies van der Rohe – lnterior Spaces, Chicago 1982

Werner Blaser, West meets East – Mies van der Rohe, Basel, ­Berlin, Boston 1996

János Bonta, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Budapest 1883

Franz Schulze, The Farnsworth House, Chicago 1997

Christian Norberg-Schulz, Casa Tugendhat, Brno, Rome 1984

Wolf Tegethoff, Im Brennpunkt der Moderne – Mies van der Rohe und das Haus Tugendhat in Brünn, Munich 1998

Franz Schulze, Mies van der Rohe – A Critical Biography, ­Chicago 1985

Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Farnsworth House, Basel, ­Berlin, Boston 1999

David Spaeth, Mies van der Rohe, New York 1985 Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Build­ing Art, Cambridge MA 1991 (Berlin 1986)

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Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Basel, Berlin, Boston 1999

Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat und Wolf Tegethoff, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Das Haus Tugendhat, Vienna, New York 1999

Ruth Cavalcanti Braun, Mies van der Rohe als Gartenarchitekt – Über die Beziehung des Außenraums zur Architektur, Berlin 2006

Adolph Stiller (ed.), Das Haus Tugendhat – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Brünn 1930, Salzburg 1999

Christiane Lange, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe & Lilly Reich – M ­ öbel und Räume, Ostfildern 2006

Yehuda E. Safran, Mies van der Rohe, Lisbon 2000

Moisés Puente (ed.), Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, ­Barcelona 2006

Ricardo Daza, Looking for Mies, Basel, Berlin, Boston 2000 Alex Dill and Rüdiger Kramm, Villa Tugendhat Brno, Karlsruhe 2007 Barry Bergdoll and Terence Riley (eds.), Mies in Berlin, Munich, New York, London 2001

Jeschke, Hauff and Auvermann, Mies van der Rohe in Berlin, ­Berlin 2007

Phyllis Lambert (ed.), Mies in America, Montreal, New York 2001 Leo Schmidt (ed.), The Wolf House Project. Traces, Spuren, Slady, Cottbus 2001

Helmut Reuter and Birgit Schulte (eds.), Mies and Modern Living –­ Interiors, Furniture, Photography, Ostfildern 2008 Sven-Olov Wallenstein, The Silence of Mies, Stockholm 2008

Rolf D. Weisse, Mies van der Rohe: Vision und Realität – Von der Concert Hall zur Neuen Nationalgalerie, Potsdam 2001 Christian Wohlsdorf, Mehr als der bloße Zweck – Mies van der Rohe am Bauhaus 1930–1933, Berlin 2001 Thilo Hilpert (ed.), Mies van der Rohe im Nachkriegsdeutschland – Das Theaterprojekt Mannheim 1953, Leipzig 2001 Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – llT Campus, Basel, Berlin, Boston 2002

Claudia Hain, Villa Urbig 1915–1917 – Zur Geschichte und Architektur des bürgerlichen Wohnhauses für den Bankdirektor Franz Urbig, Berlin 2009 Christiane Lange, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Architektur für die Seidenindustrie, Berlin 2011 Joachim Jäger, Neue Nationalgalerie – Mies van der Rohe, ­Ostfildern 2011 Christophe Girot (ed.), Mies als Gärtner, Zurich 2011

Max Stemshorn, Mies und Schinkel – Das Vorbild Schinkels im Werk Mies van der Rohes, Tübingen, Berlin 2002

David Židlický, Villa Tugendhat – Rehabilitation and Ceremonial Reopening, Brno 2012

Aurora Cuito, Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona 2002 Maritz Vandenberg, Farnsworth House – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, London 2003 Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Crown Hall, Basel, Berlin, Boston 2004 Charles Waldheim (ed.), CASE: Hilberseimer/Mies van der Rohe, Lafayette Park, Detroit, Munich, Berlin, London, New York 2004 Werner Blaser, Mies van der Rohe – Federal Center Chicago, ­Basel, Berlin, Boston 2004

Danielle Aubert, Lana Cavar and Natasha Chandani (eds.), Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit, Detroit 2012 Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe – A Critical Biography, New and Revised Edition, Chicago, London 2012 Kerstin Plüm (ed.), Mies van der Rohe im Diskurs – Innovationen, Haltungen, Werke, Aktuelle Positionen, Bielefeld 2013 Mario Ferrari and Laura Pavia, Mies van der Rohe – Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin 1962–1968, Bari 2013 Phyllis Lambert, Building Seagram, New Haven, London 2013

Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten – Probleme der Erhaltung, Probleme der Bewertung, Petersberg 2004

Detlef Mertins, Mies – The Art of Living, London 2014

Enrique Colomés and Gonzalo Moure, Mies van der Rohe – V ­ elvet and Silk Space in Berlin, Madrid 2004 Kent Kleinman and Leslie Van Duzer, Mies van der Rohe – The ­Krefeld Villas, Princeton 2005 Yilmaz Dziwior, Mies van der Rohe – Blick durch den Spiegel, ­Cologne 2005 George Dodds, Building Desire – On the Barcelona Pavilion, New York 2005 Claire Zimmermann, Mies van der Rohe – 1886–1969, Cologne 2006

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About the Author Carsten Krohn studied architecture, art history and urban planning at the Academy of Fine Arts and the university in Hamburg and at Columbia University, New York. He published his Ph.D thesis on the reception of Buckminster Fuller among architects. He has worked with the architectural firm of Norman Foster and as an assistant professor at the University of Karlsruhe. He also taught at the Humboldt-University and Technical University, both in Berlin. In 2010 he curated the exhibition The Unbuilt Berlin.

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