An earlier blog entry of mine, “Genealogy of Influence,” promised a series of posts about the architects and theorists who influenced my architectural world view. This is the latest post in the series.
2020 has been a cursed and pernicious year. Perhaps as a defense mechanism, many of us have looked for silver linings or solace in things we find inspiring, beautiful, and comforting. For me, these include reawakening my appreciation for the genius embodied by the master architects I came to admire at the outset of my life in architecture, particularly my affinity for their most sophisticated, serene, and elegant works.
Such
was the case earlier this year when I learned of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s yearlong celebration of the life and times of Dr. Edith Farnsworth
and the sublime weekend retreat in Plano, Illinois designed for her in a
minimalist idiom by pioneering German Modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). The Farnsworth House is a true
icon of avant-garde modern architecture. Completed in 1951, the 1,500-square-foot
structure is a thorough summation of the great architect’s formal concepts at
the time: clear-span, universal, and flexible space, and an unwavering tectonic
clarity achieved through the spare use and expression of a building’s structure
and materiality. The project’s setting—a scenic meadow within the flood plain
of the Fox River—ensures a classic reciprocity and balanced dialogue between architecture
and nature. It is a masterpiece.
Stunningly beautiful as the Farnsworth House appears in photographs (I’ve yet to visit it in person but hope to someday), it was notoriously dysfunctional. Its costly and obsessive detailing would not spare Dr. Farnsworth from its failings. Unbearably hot in the summer, bone-chillingly cold in the winter, prone to leaking, and victim to seasonal flooding, the house often proved unlivable.
The National Trust’s focus on Edith Farnsworth indirectly spotlights her relationship with Mies, which started as client & architect but would become both a creative and romantic entanglement, and ultimately an acrimonious legal row between the two (Farnsworth sued for malpractice, citing the substantial cost increase beyond the original price agreed to in 1949; Mies sued for unpaid construction costs). Their story is one fit for a Hollywood treatment, and sure enough a big-screen film is in the works with its producers casting Elizabeth Debicki as Edith and Ralph Fiennes as Mies.
Drama and the project’s shortcomings aside, I immediately liked the Farnsworth House because it was so clearly a distillation of architectural principles. In this regard, it made sense to me as I struggled as a student to understand how buildings should be designed with principled intentions, as opposed to being entirely devoid of them. This was textbook architecture with a capital “A.”
Like Le Corbusier, and to a lesser degree Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies was one of the canonical modern architects. He joined other progressive architects in seeking a new architectural style guided by visionary and rational problem-solving and expressive of the modern condition. He would serve as the last director of the Bauhaus before its closure under pressure by the Nazis, who regarded the school to be a center of communist intellectualism. Like some of his Bauhaus colleagues (Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer among them), Mies chose to leave Germany for the U.S. before World War II. It was here that he would see his influence gain the most traction. Both directly and indirectly, his hand in shaping corporate, civic, cultural, and educational architecture along modernist lines in the years following the War is undeniable. For better or worse, the legacy of Mies van der Rohe remains evident in major cities everywhere.
I have
seen two of Mies’ buildings in person: the Seagram Building in New York, and the Martin Luther
King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC (his last project, completed in
1973 after his death). Of these two, the Seagram Building is clearly superior,
though the MLK Memorial Library underscores how much the lasting worth of his
designs was dependent upon generous budgets (both for their initial construction
and ongoing maintenance) and the attendant use of top-quality materials.
Many regard the Seagram Building to be the epitome of the modern skyscraper. Enjoying a lavish budget, Mies and his team were able to indulge his aesthetic predilections in pursuit of nothing less than the standard by which all other office towers would be judged. In addition to the grand gesture of setting the building behind a generous open plaza along Park Avenue (unprecedented at the time of its completion in 1958), the building boasts an exquisitely proportioned and detailed bronze & glass façade. Despite the renown of Mies’ dictum “Less is more,” the design employs non-structural bronze I-sections that only function to suggest the actual structural frame behind them (so perhaps his companion tenet “God is in the details” is more applicable). The Seagram Building did serve as a template for the countless skyscrapers that followed, though few if any would attain its level of brilliance, and most would be nothing more than cliched, cheap knockoffs.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library isn’t a bad example of modern architecture; however, in addition to suffering the deprivations of a modest construction budget and inadequate maintenance since its opening, the building highlights the shortcomings of universally applying Mies’ principles of free-flowing universal space to a program that would welcome spatial differentiation. The DC Public Library system is proceeding with a major modernization project, so we’ll see if the planned improvements ameliorate the MLK Library’s deficiencies while honoring Mies’ original design intent.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was dogmatic and uncompromising, but in this regard he was no different than many of history’s great architects. Architectural historians will point to his outsized influence and role in disseminating a particular strain of modern architecture. My takeaway from his body of work will always include the architect’s duty to determine an optimal relationship between a building and its site, the desirability of getting proportions right, and the importance of choosing the right building materials.
No comments:
Post a Comment