Mies van der Rohe

Barcelona Pavilion 1929

“Every physical element has been distilled to its irreducible essence. The  interior is unprecedentedly transparent to the  surrounding site, and also unprecedentedly  uncluttered in itself. All of the paraphernalia of traditional living –rooms, walls, doors, interior trim, loose furniture, pictures on walls,  even personal possessions – have been virtually abolished in a puritanical  vision of simplified, transcendental existence.

Mies  had finally achieved a goal towards which he had been feeling his way for  three decades."

Mies van der Rohe

Farnsworth House 1946

• In Europe, before World  War II, Mies emerged as one of the most innovative leaders of the modern  movement, producing visionary projects for glass and steel and executing a  number of small but critically significant buildings.

• In the United  States, after 1938, he transformed the architectonic expression of the  steel frame in American architecture and left a nearly unmatched legacy of  teaching and building.

“In its simplest form architecture is rooted in entirely functional   considerations, but it can reach up through all degrees of

value to the highest sphere of spiritual existence into the realm of pure art.” 

The architecture of  the house represents the ultimate refinement of Mies van der Rohe’s  minimalist expression of structure and space.

Mies van der Rohe

• Furniture

Mies van der Rohe

• Seagram Building 1958 International style

•The Seagram Building (and the Lever House, which sits just across Park Avenue) set the architectural style for skyscrapers in New York for a several decades.

•It appears as a simple bronze box, set back from Park Avenue by a large, open granite plaza.

•Mies did not intend the open space in front of the building to become a gathering area, but it developed as such, and became very popular as a result

Mies wanted a complete

regularity in the appearance of the building.

"structure is spiritual" and "less is more."

 Following these premises, the Seagram Building is meant to confirm Mies' assertion that when modern industrialized building technology is truthfully expressed, architecture  becomes transcendent.

He believed that the more a building was pared to itsessential structural and functional elements, and the less superfluous imagery is used,  the more a building expresses its structure and form.

"Skyscrapers reveal their bold structural patternduring construction.  Only then does the gigantic steel web seem impressive.  When the outer walls are put in place, the structural system, which is the basis of all artistic design, is hidden by a chaos of meaningless and trivial forms...

Instead of trying to solve old problems with these old forms we should develop new forms from the very nature of the new problems. 

We can see the new structural principlesmost clearly when we use glass in place of the outer walls, which is feasible today since in a skeleton building these outer walls do not carry weight. 

The use of glass imposes new solutions."

Recognizing the need, Charles Eames said, is the primary condition for design. Early in their careers together, Charles and Ray identified the need for affordable, yet high-quality furniture for the average consumer -- furniture that could serve a variety of uses.

For forty years the Eameses experimented with ways to meet this challenge, designing flexibility into their compact storage units and collapsible sofas for the home; seating for stadiums, airports, and schools; and chairs for virtually anywhere.

Charles & Ray Eames

"What works is better than what looks good," Ray said. "The looks good can change, but what works, works."

The aluminum chair's concept formed the basis of the office's 1962 Eames Tandem Sling Seating, an institutional multiple-seating system designed for Washington's Dulles International Airport.

The Eameses' molded-plywood chair was their first attempt to create a single shell that would be comfortable without padding and could be quickly mass-produced

The expensive metal-stamped chair was replaced by a low -cost fiberglass reinforced plastic chair.

Inspired by trays, dress forms, baskets, and animal traps, the Eames Office investigated bent and welded wire mesh as the basis for furniture designs.

The wire-mesh chair, like the fiberglass chair, was a uni-shell design. The shell could be adapted to various base configurations and upholstery types

The Eameses' molded-plywood chair was their first attempt to create a single shell that would be comfortable without padding and could be quickly mass-produced