Tag: mies

modules, mullions, and mies

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Today, I’m featuring the pinnacle of Mies’ urban tower typologies: the Seagram Building of 1958.  The wide flange steel mullions on the Lake Shore Drive apartments are rendered in custom bronze extrusions, with thermal breaks at the windows, but all appearing as though they were constructed of arc-welded steel sections (as at the Farnsworth House).  The glass curtainwall is brought proud of the structural column line, allowing the windows to be consistently sized throughout.  A contemporaneous example in Toronto follows:

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mies-a-palooza

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While working in Chicago, I became painfully aware of how little I actually understood the mature work of Mies van der Rohe, especially with regard to his command of modules, structural regularity, and the finesse of his details.  So I drew.  I drew every one of his corners I could get my hands on – from the early simplicity of the Lake Shore Drive Apartments to the apex of complexity at the Seagram Building only some 10 years later.  Over the next few days I’ll be overwhelming you with these drawings.  Enjoy.

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gas station, classical var.

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GAS-STATION_01

We all know what gas stations look like here in America – banal.  Yet, the same ‘Mid-Century’ Modernism that is so popular right now also tidied up these rather pedestrian buildings as well.  Mies van der Rohe even tried his hand at one in Montreal as part of a larger development.  However, decades of neglect and changing cultural tastes have obscured the once minimal elegance of these structures.  I drove past an example in Santa Monica that had been covered up in all the various and cheap appliques of ‘Mediterranean’ style.  If Modernism could love this typology, could good Classicism?  Behold, the fruits of such thinking – Doric porticos and pyramidal skylights.

a new angle on bathrooms

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TOILET_01

The bathroom here at my office has the toilet and the sink in opposite corners from each other.  If one were to make the room perfectly square, and superimpose it in a panelled volume, with an incredibly fancy jib door, what might that look like?  Plan and RCP (reflected ceiling plan) on top of one another, with studies of what to do with the left over corners.