| Issue 92 XI-XII 2001 22 |
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MIES VAN DER ROHE Berlin / Chicago |
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| Luis Fernández-Galiano Mies es más Mies is More Doce capítulos Twelve Chapters Luis Fernández-Galiano Mies ad usum Delphini: 60 años en 60 obras 60 Years in 60 Works Berlin 1907-1937 Movimientos de apertura: el clasicismo del Berlín guillermino Opening Movements: the Classicism of Wilhelmine Berlin Los proyectos teóricos: formas para después de una guerra The Theoretical Projects: Forms for the Postwar Years Maclas modernas: la efervescencia experimental de Weimar Modern Assemblages: the Experimental Effervescence of Weimar El espacio liberado: exponiendo un espíritu nuevo The Space in Freedom: Exhibiting a New Spirit Concursos metropolitanos: el laboratorio alemán de lo universal Metropolitan Competitions: the German Laboratory of the Universal El refugio doméstico: tapias ante la tormenta del III Reich The Domestic Shelter: Walls against the Storm of the Third Reich Chicago 1939-1969 Gramáticas pedagógicas: el acero como idioma americano Pedagogical Grammars: Steel as the American Language Las ideas germinales: estructuras para la transparencia The Germinal Ideas: Structures for Transparency Alturas residenciales: la segunda Escuela de Chicago Residential Heights: the Second Chicago School El orden industrial: construcción, democracia y monumento The Industrial Order: Construction, Democracy and Monument Luz, más luz: los templos tardíos de la técnica Light, More Light: the Late Temples of Technique El rascacielos urbano: prismas impasibles y obras imposibles The Urban Skyscraper: Impassive Prisms and Impossible Works Cuatro secciones Four Sections Rosemarie Haag Bletter Mies y la transparencia oscura Mies and Dark Transparency Jean-Louis Cohen Anhelos alemanes de América: las visiones urbanas de Mies German Desires of America: Miess Urban Visions Phyllis Lambert Inmersión en Mies: la etapa americana Mies Immersion: the American Period Terence Riley Hacer historia: Mies y el Museo de Arte Moderno Making History: Mies and the Museum of Modern Art Ignasi de Solà-Morales Claves biográficas de la obra Biographical Keys of the Work |
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Luis Fernández-Galiano Mies is More |
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Fifteen years ago, the centenary of the birth of Mies van der
Rohe coincided with a period of singular postmodern fervor, and that untimely simultaneity
projected an uncertain light upon the anniversary. Even the Museum of Modern Art, which
keeps the architects archives, offered no more than an obliged apathetic exhibition,
and many of the excellent studies arisen to mark this anniversary focused on the shadows
of his biography and the sharp edges of his work. The early monograph published by this
magazine on the occasion of the event (AV 6, 1986) with
the collaboration, among others, of the architectural historians and critics Martin
Filler, Kenneth Frampton, Charles Jencks, Julius Posener and Franz Schulze , echoed
the unpleasant climate of the times, described stenographically in the title of one of my
texts in that very issue: Mies is Less: a Revisionist Centenary. Fifteen years later the mood has changed, and the two great New York exhibitions in the summer of 2001 bear witness to a new attitude toward the modern master. This monograph of AV relies on the research efforts that have crystallized in the two exhibitions Mies in Berlin, organized by the MoMA; and Mies in America, organized by the Whitney Museum and the Centre Canadien d'Architecture , and in fact its argumental core is formed by four articles from the catalogs of the respective exhibitions, written by the German-born New York professor Rosemarie Haag Bletter, the French historian and ex-director of the CCA Jean-Louis Cohen, the MoMAs Chief Curator of Architecture and organizer (with Barry Bergdoll) of the Berlinese exhibition, Terence Riley, and the Canadian philantropist, founding director of the CCA and also curator of the American exhibit, Phyllis Lambert. These texts offer inedit perspectives both about the European stretch of Miess career and of his years in Chicago, and shed light on the vicissitudes that his critical appraisal has experienced after Philip Johnson set up in 1947 the first monographic exhibition devoted to his work. With the aim of fitting these approaches within a pedagogical frame, the articles by researchers are introduced with a summary of the masters career whose 60 years of creative life are reflected in 60 works that try to show the essential lines of his architectural inquiries. Lastly, the number closes with a portrait of Mies that Ignasi de Solá-Morales wrote for the 1986 monograph, which we would end up replacing by another piece of his on modern representation, and that we publish now as a posthumous tribute to the Catalan architect and historian: few events have been so decisive as his philological reconstruction of the Barcelona pavilion to promote the current state of opinion that makes possible the title Mies is More. |
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