Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)His aesthetic theories and his completed buildings reveal a preoccupation with industrial technology that shows quality and perfection of detail. Mies has set himself the task of re-establishing fundamental values in architecture. The fundamental values are the qualities of space and of form; and of proportion and of detail. Mies's works are great, that is because of his concentration upon pure form and pure detail.
When he opened his own office in 1913, he designed several villas and also produced daring design of a scyscraper that started modern architecture. In 1919, the sketches that Mies developed were for an all-glass tower, twenty storeys in height. For these projects revealed a quality in Mies which has been his most impressive characteristic throughout his career. That quality is the ability to produce architectural statements of such overwhelming precision, simplicity and a major revelation impact.
Below, are two of Mies's great buildings, the Lake Shore Drive Apartments and the Seagram Building.
As you can see from his designs, Mies developed the concept of 'skin and bones' architecture. Where steel and concrete represents strength; these would be the 'bones' of his building. Glass is the veil that draped over the skeleton to form the 'skin'. He always wanted to emphasize on structure.
The building that I have chosen is the Crown Hall, at the Illinois Institute of Technology (1950-56). Crown Hall incorporates a clear span of 220 by 120 feet. The building are framed in steel with deep steel girders or trusses spanning the distance between outside columns that spaced 60 feet apart. As a result, there is no need for any interior supports at all, so that the enclosed space can serve any functions.
The deep girders are above the roof plane, so that the roof ceiling (which was hung from the overhead girders) becomes a flat slab uninterrupted by any dropped beams. The building is famous for its clear strutural expression, the transparency building that shows Mies's style with its steel and glass facade, and the open, column free interior space.
I chose Mies van der Rohe as my master architect for this project because of his design where eventhough his style is simple, with the use of only steel, concrete and glass; but he wanted to emphasize on the structure of the building itself.
Reference:
Blake, P. 1960. 'Architecture and Structure.' Middlesex: Penguin Books
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