Professional Documents
Culture Documents
TERENCE RILEY
B A R R Y BERGDOLL
FEth essays by
VlTTORlO MAGNAGO LAMPUGNANI, DETLEF MERTINS,
WOLF TEGETHOFF, FRITZ NEUMEYER, JAN MARUHN,
ANDRES LEPIK, WALLIS MILLER, ROSEMARIE HAAG BLETTER,
AND JEAN-LOUIS COHEN
FOREWORD
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Making History: Mies van der Rohe and The Museum of Modern Art Terence Riley
Berlin Modernism and the Architecture of the Metropolis Httorio Magnago Lampugnani
Architectures of Becoming: Mies van der Rohe and the Avant-Garde Detlef Mertins
Catching the Spirit: Mies's Early Work and the Impact of the "Prussian Style" WbEfTegethofl
PLATES
Building for Art: Mies van der Rohe as the Architect for Art Collectors Jan Maruh.n.
EPILOGUE
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T R U S T E E S O F T H E M U S E U M OF M O D E R N A R T
Mies and Exhibitions
WALLIS MILLER
nyone even modestly familiar with Mies's that it was too conservative. As Richard Pommer
A architecture will associate his time in
Germany with exhibitions. A list of his important
has pointed out, the moment was prophetic:
while it might have been the last time Mies's
works of the period might begin with a building work would be rejected from a modern show, it
such as the Tugendhat House (1928-30), but was the first of many times that he distanced
exhibition projects, such as the German Pavilion himself from other members of the modern
in Barcelona (1928-29) and the Weissenhof movement+specially Gropius-with work that
Housing Colony Master Plan in Stuttgart was different, even if it would not always be
(1925-27), would soon follow. A moment's more labeled "conservative."l
thought would likely conjure up the five projects Although many scholars move easily
of the early 1920s--the Friedrichstrasse and the between the exhibition projects and the others,
Glass skyscrapers, the Brick and the Concrete comparing, for example, the German Pavilion in
country houses, and the Concrete Ofice Build- Barcelona to the Tugendhat House, the exhibition
+I
ing;'not all of these projects were designed for projects may constitute a separate genre of work.
exhibitions, but their existence depended on Did the nature of an exhibition project-its focus
their being exhibited, in the pages of books and on certain issues and its freedom from address-
journals as well as in galleries. Mies's collabora- ing others-allow Mies to produce designs that
tions with Lilly Reich add more projects to this he would have been Gable to create otherwise?
list: they worked together on the Glass Room Or were exhibition projects only distinguished
and the Velvet and Silk Caf6, for exhibitions in from the others by their venue?
Stuttgart and Berlin in 19273 on Die Wohnung In some cases-the Velvet and Silk Caf6, the
unserer Zeit (The dwelling of our time), at the expositions in Barcelona and in Brussels-Mies
1931 German Building Exhibition in Berlin; on was asked to design exhibition contexts for a
various displays at the Deutsches Yolk, deutsche variety of objects and ideas: textiles, beer, glass,
Arbeit (German people, German work) exhibi- national identity. In others--the November-
tion in Berlin in 1934; and on other exhibits of gruppe exhibitions, the Weissenhof Housing
German industry. Mies's unrealized design of Colony, the German Building Exhibition, and
1934 for the German Pavilion at the upcoming Mies's design for his own retrospective at The
International Exposition in Brussels, and his Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1947-he
position, early in his career, as director of the put architecture itself on display. But one might
i, Novembergruppe-which primarily existed to say that architecture was on display at all of
produce exhibitions-might complete a list of these events, for Mies's approach to exhibition
important German projects were it not for design blurred the distinction between the con-
another event that cannot be omitted: Walter tent of the display and the context he created for
Gropius's refusal to include Mies's Kriiller- it. One of the f i s t to recognize the architectural
Miiller Villa Project of 1912-1 3 in the Ausstellung value of these designs was Philip Johnson, in his
fir unbekannte Architekten (Exhibition of review of Die Wohnung unserer Zeit, which Mies
unknown architects, 19192, on the grounds designed and directed: "The art of exhibiting is
a branch of architecture and should be prac- "an apartment for two people in a multistory
ticed as such. Mies has designed the entire hall, apartment house in an east-west orientation," "a
containing houses and apartments by the various single-story row house with a southern exposure,"
architects, as itself one piece of architecture. "a two-story apartment in a tower," "a four-room
The result is a clear arrangement inviting apartment," "a minimal apartment"; others were
inspection, instead of the usual long central identified by the social situations of their occu-
hall, with exhibits placed side by side."" pants: houses for couples with and without chil-
The German Building Exhibition was a dren, "bachelor's apartments," "an apartment for
huge show dedicated to all sectors of the German
building industry, with Die Wohnung unserer
Zeit, sponsored by the Deutscher Werkbund,
representing architecture (figs. 1-3). The design
that enabled Johnson to understand "the art of
exhibiting" as "a branch of architecturen-rather
than as a series of display armatures, or as a
representation of an architectural context that
existed elsewhere-enveloped twenty-three
full-scale displays of housing in a context that
overwhelmed any reference to their existence
on other sites and in other conditions. All of
these units were on the main floor of the exhibi-
tion hall; six freestanding units stood at the
center of the space, while the rest were on the two working women," "a house for an athlete,"
perimeter, tucked under a balcony. The exhibit and "an apartment for an intellectual."3 Despite
brought together one-room flats, duplexes, the promise of variety, however, what visitors saw
single-family homes, and a Boarding House or was a unified sea of white surfaces and expanses
apartment hotel, designed mostly by architects of glass. Rather than letting the exteriors of the
and artists allied with the Werkbund's modern exhibits betray their different designers, Mies
faction (among them Hans and Wassili Luck- rendered them identically, with a limited
hardt, Hugo Haring, Gropius, Reich, Josef palette of materials and proportions. Although
Albers, Marcel Breuer, and Erwin Gutkind). the flats and houses under the balcony were not
The Prussian government's building administra- designed to b e contiguous, Mies orchestrated
tion was also represented, with a display of their facades as a rhythmic composition, elimi-
"alternative dwellings" that included dorm nating any simple separation between them.
rooms and prison cells. This continuous perimeter seems to have
The exhibition's official guidebook suggested expressed a concern for the coherence of the
that the housing would be quite diverse. Some exhibition context rather than for the authen-
units were defined by their physical attributes- ticity of a display of housing.
Mies also obscured the varied origins and house, as one contemporary reporter wrote:
purposes of the units at the center of the hall. "The section of the apartment tower. . .won't
Otto Haesler and Karl Volker's duplex apartment, be misunderstood only bf laypeople: people
for example, was presented as a freestanding think it is a single-family house that the archi-
unit; its only concession to its intended location tect in some crazy mood placed on stilts."4
in an apartment tower was that steel columns Subordinatingthe different origins and pur-
lifted it one story off the ground. These columns poses of the housing units to the exhibition's
could have been mistaken for part of the unit formal unity, Mies wove the structures into the
340 1 MlES IN B E R L I N
is-
\
344 1 MlES IN B E R L I N
of gutters, flashing, or any other functional was now clearly shown to affect the definition
change in materials. Only a row of small square of the wall itself, which at once contained and
openings between the I-beams at the top of the flattened space. For Mies, the exhibition pavilion,
building might have admitted air or light to the at least in Barcelona, became a way to recon-
inside. As the Farnsworth House (1949-50) and sider the nature of enclosure. While he used the
the Seagram Building would do, the pavilion German Pavilion to investigate the location as
pushed its structural elements-or rather their well as the physical character of a building's
expression-to its edge, calling attention to the enclosure, in the Electric Utilities Pavilion he
boundary between itself and the rest of the world. concentrated on the relationship of enclosure
The design of the interior, executed by Fritz to periphery, simultaneously emphasizing and
Schiiler under Mies's supervision, underscored dissolving it in a way that foreshadowed his
this emphasis on enclosure. Only a wide low American work.
opening cut into the facade provided entry, to
what Fritz Neumeyer has described as a support- Drawings
free space that gave the illusion of being open In all of these exhibition designs, Mies privi-
on all sides. The interior of the windowless cube, leged actual space, rejecting the use of small
Neumeyer writes, was completely covered with scale to suggest a full-scale design. By contrast,
large-scale photographs depicting various aspects his first five modern designs took the form of
of the German power industry. Together these drawings and scale models. The Friedrichstrasse
images gave the illusion of a three-dimensional Skyscraper, the Glass Skyscraper, the Concrete
panorama, seeming to open the space toward an Office Building, the Concrete Country House,
imaginary horizon.27 It was as if the walls that and the Brick Country House projects were all
might have divided the interior space had been exhibited as part of the Novembergruppe section
pushed to its edges, where they were clad in of the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung exhibi-
photographs rather than by a typical facing tions of 1922,1923,and 1924, and were displayed
material such as plaster. Some of the photo- in rooms containing drawing, graphics, painting,
graphs even wrapped around the building's and sculpture. Unlike Mies's other exhibition
corners, dissolving the perception of a limited, work, these projects were impossible to enter,
interior space. The colored and textured walls of but the size of his drawings suggests that, like
the German Pavilion were here exchanged for the murals he later used in Barcelona and
large-scale images emulating a real view, and Berlin, they may have transformed the exhibi-
thus shaping the space of the pavilion-as tion space at its edges.
large photographs would in the Deutsches Yolk, Working at full scale was part of Mies's
deutsche Arbeit exhibition five years later, as early career. As a fifteen-year-old draftsman in
paintings would in Mies's Museum for a Small an Aachen stucco factory, he drew ornaments of
City Project of 1942, and as floor-to-ceiling views all styles, he said in a later interview, on "huge
so often would in his modern work. The transfor- drawing boards that went from floor to ceiling
mation of boundaries so crucial to his architecture and stood vertically against the wall." Like most
Making the drawings required more than visual
acuity; it engaged his body. At least for the
draftsmen, the ornamenfwas palpable even
before it was built.%
Mies's unusually large renderings of some
of his architectural projects may be indebted to
his experience in the stucco factory. He made
his biggest drawings for competition entries and
ideal projects that were to be exhibited in some
way but not necessarily ever built. His render-
ings of the Bismarck Monument Project (1910),
the Concrete Country House, and the Concrete
Office Building were extraordinarily large, the
first two being over 7 feet long and the third
reaching a size of almost 9 % feet long and
over 4% feet high. The photomontages of the
Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper and of the Bank
and Building Project in Stuttgart (1928),
and the elevation of the Glass Skyscraper, were
somewhat smaller, although all had one dimen-
sion of at least 4 % feet. These large renaerings,
which include four of the five projects that
marked the beginning of Mies's modern career,
suggest an attempt to give the projects palpable
15.Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Electric Utilities Pavilion,
International Exposition, Barcelona, 1929 existence, for himself as well as for his audi-
16. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Fritz Schiller. Electric
ence? While the renderings could not literally
Utilities Pavilion. Interior with photomurals be entered, their size made them transform the
space in which they were displayed.
Before Mfes exhibited Ms work with the
shop drawings, his were big, as close to life-size Novembergruppe, one critic voiced his frustra-
as possible: 'We made drawings the size of an tions about architecture exhibitions: "It really is
entire quarter of a room ceiling." The process preposterous to present archieecture in exhibi-
of making these drawings seems to have had as tion halls. Archite~turecan only be experienced
much in common with Mies's later work as did in nature, its complete effect can only unfold
their size: "You couldn't lean on or against if it is built as it should be and placed in the
them; you had to stand squarely in front of natural environmentfor which the building is
them and draw not just by turning your hand intended and in which it belongs."m Mies
but by swinging your whole arm," he explained. directly challenged this attitude, and continued