In the Shadow of Mies

One of the many great things I experienced in Chicago was the concentrated work of Mies. In some parts of the city it almost felt like it would be almost impossible to a see a building not built, or at least heavily influenced, by Mies.

As a naive first year on a field trip in Berlin I couldn’t grasp what all the fuss was about when we visited his swan song; the Neue National Gallery. I could see there were some special things going on with the detailing but I just didn’t get it...I even called it anal in a presentation on the detailing on our return.

Whether it is my improved knowledge and appreciation of architecture or whether it was the sheer quantity of examples of his work on show in Chicago I don’t know, but I certainly have much more respect for the master now.

One might say that there is no real need for so many to make an impression as they are essentially all the same, after interrogating one of the downtown office blocks and understanding it, you understand them all and through them their designer. Wes Jones talks about this approach to architecture in “El Segundo”

“The architect should approach each work as evidence of a particular understanding of the world, as evidence of the architects belief that this understanding...is the most correct or appropriate...since the architect’s work is driven by this relationship to the world, a certain consistency should be expected from project to project. Those architects who claim to make up fresh each project in response to the specific requirements of each client are abrogating a responsibility to the larger picture, and in this view it would not be incorrect to claim that what they were doing was not really architecture...”

Seeing the repeated blocks over and over again just accentuates their grace, the detailing and the underlying logic. With almost brutal persuasion you are forced to acknowledge that Mies has found the “most perfect” solution to the challenges he faced with a logic that pervades everything. To try and better Mies in his sphere would be like trying to take on a heavyweight at his prime in the ring, you cannot beat Mies at his own game. Speaking specifically of Mies, Wes Jones says that

“...the threshold of refinement is where the master pauses...his work allows no other destination and suggests no further development except perhaps by repetition. All other directions are already steps backwards.”

I could see this notion exemplified several times in downtown Chicago where many buildings seemed to try and take on their Miesian neighbours head to head and always fell short of the mark. They had all either gone too far in stripping down the detail and looked bland and austere or had failed to pick up on the subtle details and appeared cluttered and fussy in comparison. It is hard to put a finger on exactly what it is that makes the Miesian buildings so successful in regards to their stripped down grace, it must be a very fine line between too much and too little and get it slightly wrong and it just doesn’t work and I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to achieve having never built anything.

The only buildings that successfully stood up to Mies were the ones that had subversively attacked him. One, the CNA centre, was strictly Miesian in every sense but clad from top to bottom in bright red, an anathema to Mies and beloved of many in Chicago. The other was Marina City by Bertrand Goldberg who studied under Mies at the Bauhaus and who created a modernistic building as pure as Mies but without a right angle in sight...a similar logic but with a different spirit. When Mies later developed the plot next door he sat his building back to further showcase and celebrate this challenge to his style.

For a man whose architecture could potentially be interpreted as egotistical this is an extremely modest gesture; but perhaps all his architecture is modest and this is why it is so stylistically similar. Wes Jones again...

“...(architecture) should be offered as an example of the way things should be, not as proof of its own uniqueness. The architect should stand behind the work, not in front of it, and any signature that the work develops through its own consistency should be emblematic of its goodness proven in each example rather than simply its difference, or its designer’s fame...”

Wes Jones goes onto claim that Mies was “not interested in being imitated but in setting a standard that challenged those who followed” The downtown proves that even with all the hustle and bustle and distractions of many varied architectural styles it is very hard for architects to rise to the challenge set by Mies. It is a different kettle of fish altogether out at the Illinois Institute of Technology campus that was masterplanned and designed by Mies. With total hegemony over the layout and design of the campus Mies was able to pursue his logic without compromise creating the greatest concentration of his work in the world.

Walking around the campus at IIT is a strange experience, it is so consistent in its language that to see a foreign object would not only seem out of place but a direct attack against the “good.” It is in this environment that 5 st-architects were invited to a competition to measure up to Mies and design a Student Centre. These were Rem Koolhaus, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Helmut Jahn and Kazuyo Sejima.

The temptation for these architects to stamp their own signature and stand toe to toe with Mies to try and better him must have been huge. But as in downtown Chicago Mies isn’t interested in “competition” but just in challenging the competitors to be “good.” Wes Jones points out that

“The vicitinity of the site is so determined by the obdurate repose of the Mies buildings that any alien presence would risk appearing silly. And of course the other competitiors proved this point except Koolhaus and Eisenman.”

As with the CNA plaza building and Marina City, Koolhaus’ winning proposal displays a similar logic but a totally different spirit. After walking round the campus in its ranges of beige, black and transparent one is confronted with a bright orange blimp but instantly it is the detailing and proportions that are recognizable as they are taken directly from their neighbours. As such the building by Koolhaus is a simple Miesian one storey box, except that it is bursting with light-hearted fun everywhere. The crowning glory of it is the wrapper around the elevated railway, the “el”, which hurtles through the building. The spectacle of this is pure genius and makes for a great arrival to the campus. It is the only building I saw in Chicago which celebrates and interacts directly with the “el”. The others are either retrospectively forced into submission by it or turn their back on it and have no windows and sound proof the entire facade. Yet the “el” is one of Chicago’s great icons and to address it in such a way seems very sensible despite being absurd; a real oxymoron of an architectural feature. The building squeezed under the “el” is full of smaller delights though, little open areas at the side of main areas that become important social spaces for example.

http://www.daapspace.daap.uc.edu/~larsongr/Larsonline/Rem-IIT_files/KoolIIT.pdf

There can be no doubt that the building is in debt to Mies but it is also subversive and rises successfully to the challenge set by Mies. By hiding in a Miesian box all be it with typically Koolhaus-isms the architect is forced to stand behind the work, to bite the bullet and see if the building can be considered good off its own back rather than Koolhaus’. It is a building that Wes Jones describes as

“a mix of respect and subversion. The respect is itself a mixture of warieness and defiance.”

I would describe it as AWESOME!