Mies van der Rohe
and the architecture that feels like nothing
1933 Germany saw a big change in power of the authority. Modernism in Germany came to a halt as well as the whole world.
To simply put, this man came into power.
Adolf Hitler, this man came into the German office with the Nazi party in 1933 and take Germany into a whole new direction. The Nazi regime endorses imperialism, we can see that through their outfits and their architecture. It was the way of the conquerer, they wanted to conquer the world.
This cause a big threat to other movements presence in Germany at the time, Modernism was one of them.
On the morning of April 11 1933, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe turned up for work as normal. It was not a normal day. The Bauhaus, the 20th century’s greatest school of art, architecture and design, was closed. The building was cordoned off by armed police and surrounded by crowds.
The rest, as they say, is history.
It’s funny when you consider that in 1928, five years earlier , Mies van der Rohe submitted a design for the iconic Barcelona Pavilion to be built for the 1929 world expo, in Barcelona.
The Barcelona Pavilion was built to show the direction of Germany, show the world that a new way is coming and this is future of Germany. That Germany is movinge forward.
The pavilion was located on a passage way, forcing visitors to circulate through it. The architecture that was almost nothing, the theme that would be presence throughout Mies’ career, the pavilion only sported glass and stone partitions, a pool, and a decorative statue.
Mies aimed to create architecture that puts emphasis on minimal structures and frameworks, “skin and bones” as he liked to refer to. We can see this through his use of pure and raw material such as the exposed steel columns and frames that supported the whole building. These frames were attatched by glass and stone blocks, creating partitions that were pleasing to the eyes. The steel columns performed their duty of supporting the structure, the frames performed their duty of supporting glass and stone blocks and the glass and stone blocks perform their duty as partitions. While ornamentations, things that are supposedly pleasing to the eyes, were only expressed through materialities (with an exception of one statue)
And this was to be the way of the future of Germany in 1929. Let’s this how the would have turned out today if Nazi Germany has chosen modernism is its style. Modernism would’ve been the architecture of the Nazi, the portrayal of a bad guy.
What makes Mies’ architectures all so very pleasurable to me is just how elegance they look.
Taking S. R. Crown Hall as an example, a huge I-beams structure that is suspended under another set of I-beams structure. These frames created a facade that was composed by these fine horizontal elements of I-beams (also presence in the Barcelona Pavilion via the horizontal stainless steel frames) that support glass walls. Mies’ structures would feel rigid yet do not obstruct the view out into the surrounding contexts of the architecture creating a free and long span line of sight that supposedly dissolves the architecture into its context.
The ground which surrounds the architecture also enters into the interior creating a harmonious sense of belonging between the two, making them feel specific to each other. We can see this from the entrance of S. R. Crown Hall where materiality came into play. Here we see the ground divided into planes and gradually elevate to form flights of stairs and a landing that leads into the entrances, as well as in Barcelona Pavilion where the ground of the outside and the inside continues from each other creating what seems like a continuous path from one opening to another.
