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How truth and beauty moved from the classical to the modern
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How truth and beauty moved from the classical to the modern
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Content
HOW TRUTH AND BEAUTY MOVED FROM THE CLASSICAL TO THE
MODERN. FROM ATHENS TO BERLIN TO CHICAGO: FROM THE
ACROPOLIS TO SCHINKEL TO MIES
by
Edward Lifson
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM—THE ARTS)
August 2009
Copyright 2009 Edward Lifson
ii
DEDICATION
To BiL and CL, to DH and to Sasha Anawalt whose love of life and art
and friendship inspires me.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ii
List of Figures iv
Abstract viii
Endnotes 70
Bibliography 73
iv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. The Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, 5th century B.C.E. 1
Figure 2. Friedrich Gilly, Plan for a monument to Friedrich II, Berlin, 1797. 2
Figure 3. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin, 1828. 3
Figure 4. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, Chicago, 1956. 4
Figure 5. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New National
Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 1968. 5
Figure 6. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, after Friedrich Gilly’s plan for a
monument to Friedrich II. 7
Figure 7. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, competition entry for a monument to
Chancellor Bismarck, 1910. 8
Figure 8. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Schauspielhaus (National Theater),
Berlin, Germany, 1817. 11
Figure 9. Portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. 15
Figure 10. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany, 1828. 18
Figure 11. Greek stoa, superimposition of a digital model of the Ionic
Stoa of Miletus over the existing ruins. (www.learningsites.com) 19
Figure 12. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, The Seagram Building, New York
City, 1958. 21
Figure 13. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Barcelona” chair, 1929. 22
Figure 14. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, chair for Glienecke Castle, Germany,
c. 1826. 23
Figure 15. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Cast Iron Garden Furniture for the
Porch of the Roman Baths; Sanssouci Gardens, Potsdam, Germany. 24
Figure 16. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, (reconstruction) bed for Queen Louise's
bedroom at Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin. 1809-1810. 25
v
Figure 17. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, daybed. 26
Figure 18. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe showing a model of the mater plan
for the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Mies began designing the
campus master plan in 1939. 27
Figure 19. Portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe standing over a model of
S.R. Crown Hall. 28
Figure 20. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, showing an I-beam
on the elevation. 29
Figure 21. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, designs for the entrance to the
Bauakademie (Academy of Architecture), Berlin, Germany, 1832 – 1835. 31
Figure 22. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, showing the main
(south) entrance. 32
Figure 23. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Bauakademie (Academy of Architecture),
main entrance, Berlin, Germany, (1832 – 1835. Demolished.) 33
Figure 24. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, corner detail. 35
Figure 25. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, full façade, main
entrance, (south facade), showing the travertine steps. 36
Figure 26. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, main entrance,
(south facade), showing the trusses above the roof. 38
Figure 27. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking
south. 39
Figure 28. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking
northwest. 40
Figure 29. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking
south. 41
Figure 30. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking
northeast, showing trees specified by landscape architect Alfred Caldwell. 42
Figure 31. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking
west on a particularly luminous night. 43
vi
Figure 32. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, plan. 45
Figure 33. Karl Friedrich Schinkel Altes Museum, plan. 46
Figure 34. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, rotunda, (engraving). 47
Figure 35. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, rotunda, (photograph). 48
Figure 36. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, looking northwest,
at the “empty” center. 49
Figure 37. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, interior view of the
entrance (drawing). 50
Figure 38. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, interior view of the
entrance (photograph). 51
Figure 39. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, stair rail. 52
Figure 40. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, stair. 53
Figure 41. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, rear (north)
elevation, showing the staircase. 54
Figure 42. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, stair. 54
Figure 43. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, rear (north)
elevation, showing stairs. 55
Figure 44. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Redern Palace (1828-1833), stair. 56
Figure 45. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Alumni Memorial Hall, IIT,
Chicago, USA (1945/1946), stair. 56
Figure 46. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Charlottenh of Palace, Berlin, Germany
1829, exterior stair. 57
Figure 47. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Barcelona Pavilion, 1929,
exterior stair. 58
Figure 48. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bacardi Rum Administration
Building, 1957-1960, for Cuba, (unbuilt). 60
vii
Figure 49. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New
National Gallery, Berlin, 1968, exterior stair. 61
Figure 50. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New
National Gallery, Berlin, exterior/interior. 62
Figure 51. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New
National Gallery, Berlin, exterior/interior. 63
Figure 52. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New
National Gallery, Berlin, interior. 64
Figure 53. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New
National Gallery, Berlin, exterior, with plaza. 65
Figure 54. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New
National Gallery, Berlin, exterior stair detail. 66
Figure 55. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, competition entry for a monument
to Chancellor Bismarck, 1910. 68
Figure 56. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, with students,
looking south. 70
Figure 57. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece,
1959. (Private Collection via F. Schulze.) 71
Figure 58. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, at Epidaurus. (Collection A. James
Speyer via Schulze.) 72
Figure 59. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, night view, looking
southwest. 77
viii
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the influence of German architect Karl Friedrich
Schinkel (1781 – 1841) on a later German architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
(1886 - 1969). Both worked in Berlin, Mies van der Rohe (known as Mies) worked
during the later part of his life in Chicago. Schinkel and Mies believed that "Truth"
and "Beauty" should be expressed in architecture. Schinkel was the foremost
neoclassical German architect, Mies was a founder of Modernism. This paper shows
how many of Schinkel's ideas and forms were absorbed by Mies, transformed and
then found their way into Mies’s buildings, urbanism and even his furniture design.
Schinkel was informed by the Enlightenment and believed that the right kind of
buildings could encourage good citizenship and more cultured individuals. Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe believed the same, and updated the ideas by using more
abstraction and modern materials.
1
In this paper we will journey with two companions, the concepts Truth and
Beauty. We join them as they move from ancient Athens on the Acropolis, to
18
th
century Berlin in an unrealized monument to Friedrich II; to an
existing Berlin project of the 19
th
century- the Altes Museum, and then in the 20
th
century, the concepts Truth and Beauty land in Chicago, at a place called S.R.
Crown Hall.
Figure 1. The Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, 5th century B.C.E.
2
Figure 2. Friedrich Gilly, Painting of a plan for a monument to Friedrich II,
Berlin, 1797.
Figure 3. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany, 1828
3
Figure 4. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, Chicago, USA,1956.
4
After World War II, Truth and Beauty attempted a comeback in Berlin.
Figure 5. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, (New National Gallery),
Berlin, Germany, 1968.
Crown Hall and the New National Gallery are filled with the ideas, the optimism and
the ideals of the European Enlightenment. Their architecture nearly bursts with
uplifting, humanist notions for better living. Ideas swirl in and around its rigorous
order. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, or Mies as he is commonly called, would wish
that if we enter his building we are uplifted, become better individuals, better
5
members of the state, more cultured and cultivated, more enlightened. Mies knew
the modern world is chaotic. He inserted a calm clearing into the din. Let's see how
it comes from the Berlin architect, painter, and theoretician Karl Friedrich Schinkel
(1781-1841), via Friedrich Gilly (1771 - 1800), via the Ancient Greeks.
The painting at the top (Figure 2), just below the image of the Acropolis, is of a plan
by the Nineteenth-century Berlin architect, Friedrich Gilly for a monument in Berlin
to the recently deceased Prussian ruler and Enlightenment arts patron, Friedrich the
Great. It was never built.
As a young man Schinkel lived at Gilly's house to work and study with him; and he
received the painting when Gilly died. Schinkel posted it on the wall in the last
building he designed, Berlin's Bauakademie (Architecture Academy). He also drew
his own version of it. Schinkel said Friedrich Gilly is "the creator of what I am." (1)
Figure 6. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, after Friedrich Gilly’s plan for a monument
to Friedrich II.
6
Mies (1886 - 1969) had a strong dose of Schinkel. Born in Aachen, Germany in
1886, Mies moved to Berlin in 1905. He was then a young, mostly untrained
architect. He later recalled,
In 1910 Mies painted When I came as a young man to Berlin and looked
around, I was interested in Schinkel because Schinkel was the most
important architect in Berlin. There were several others but Schinkel was
the most important man. His buildings were an excellent example of
Classicism- the best I know. And certainly I became interested in that. I
studied him carefully and came under his influence. That could have
happened to anybody. I think Schinkel had wonderful constructions,
excellent proportions, and good detailing. (2)
a competition entry for a monument to Chancellor Bismarck. His entry advanced but
was deemed too expensive and was not selected as the winner, and was never built.
It certainly recalls the work of Gilly and Schinkel.
Figure 7. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, competition entry for a monument to
Chancellor Bismarck, 1910.
7
The second image from the top (Figure 3) is Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum,
the "Old Museum," in Berlin. What is important for us is not that Mies' work looks
like Schinkel's, or Gilly's, or hardly what it looks like at all; what is important for us
is what they were trying to do.
Gilly's project holds the Greek ideal up as the highest form of architecture. Clearly
Gilly has drawn a little Parthenon. Having no hills in Berlin on which to place this
temple for the gds, Gilly would construct his own mound for it. And what he has
done is place rough, unpolished blocks at the base, which give way to lighter, and
more highly carved, shaped and polished stone at the top. He is giving us the history
of Greek Architecture over the ages, in one work. (As a city is interesting for its
layering of history, so can a single project be.) Gilly has introduced the element of
time into a static work.
Furthermore, he sends you on a voyage of discovery to enter his building. As you
turn through his circulation path before entering the temple on high, your eye would
be directed to views of nature, the country and the city. At the top, in the
center, Gilly would place a statue of Friedrich the Great. A great architectural
symphony, composed during the time of Beethoven (1770 - 1827).
Schinkel had to wait years to build anything. Napoleon's armies occupied Prussia
until about 1815, and he made his living as a painter. When the French were finally
expelled Prussian intellectuals and leaders sought to deal with their great
8
humiliation. Monuments were needed! Strength! A more robust and vital body
politic. A whole greater than the individuals in the Prussian state. They hoped that a
cultivated middle class would share power with the aristocracy. They drew much of
their inspiration from Kant's ethos of personal responsibility as a civic virtue. (3)
Germans turned to Greek Antiquity for their inspiration. Through this they wished
to establish for their new state political and moral freedom that Athenian Greece was
known for. The choice of Greece over classical Rome was also due to the newly
liberated Prussians wanting to not be any longer like the French. Paris' Ecole des
Beaux-Arts favored the Roman Classical Manner. Berlin became known as "Athens
on the Spree." The ancient Greeks valued the individual and his inner struggles, the
Prussians wished to import that for their new modern civic society. Free individuals
would maintain a free society. (4) (Later we will see how Mies van der Rohe gives
citizens almost complete freedom and reprises other Greek ideals through Schinkel.)
Between 1816 and 1830, Schinkel designed heroic buildings and transformed central
Berlin. He fully believed in architecture's ability to raise personal and communal
civic consciousness. Schinkel designed a royal guardhouse, a major church and
restored Berlin's cathedral. By redesigning Berlin's urban spaces he sought to
restructure Prussian society. (Schinkel did much work at various times in his career
in a neo-Gothic style, but discussion of that is for another essay.) In his drawings
Schinkel continuously analyzes connections between Athens and neo-classical
Prussia. (5)
9
Figure 8. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Schauspielhaus (National Theater), Berlin,
Germany, 1817.
Schinkel designed this National Theater in the neoclassical style for central Berlin
with a broad stairway to the main entrance to define the square and continue the
public space from the square right up into the National Theater. Would that we gave
the arts such public prominence today! The Schauspielhaus still stands, in the center
of one of the most beautiful squares in Europe, the Gendarmenmarkt. Unfortunately,
the interior was destroyed in World War II. (a) The monument in the center of the
10
square is to Friedrich Schiller (1759 - 1805), a promoter of the idea of a National
Theater for Germany (Schiller sought one in Mannheim); he also wrote An die
Freude ("To Joy") in 1785, the same time Schinkel was working. Schiller's words
are perhaps best known for their setting in the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony. It all comes together. Two great artists seeking to join individuals into a
strong collective and cultivate and uplift them so that their nation will experience
Joy. (As a point of history, this theater is also the spot where Leonard Bernstein
conducted Beethoven's Ninth on Christmas 1989 to celebrate the then less than two
months old reunification of Germany.)
Friedrich Schiller, the philosopher, playwright, historian and poet, whose monument
graces the square, studied classicism with his friend Goethe. Two of Schiller's most
famous poems are "Gods of Greece” and "Artists." The first describes lost splendor,
the second speaks of what lies at the core of this essay, how art positively influences
the upward evolution of humankind. Schiller espoused a German National Theater,
which would cultivate the people. He believed no strong state was possible without
strong individuals. The German word Bildung refers to one's formation. This
concept became very important in Germany, through the work of the educator
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), and others, including the philosopher Johann
Gottlieb Fichte, (1762-1814) a philosopher and founder of German idealism and
German nationalism. (6)
11
When Schinkel designed a great theater for the center of Berlin, he did not make it
out of marble, or imported or precious stone. What he did was use common Prussian
brick construction, clad in stone, and organized it in such a way that especially as it
rises, the composition becomes extremely elegant, the common bricks are brought
together into a very high level of building art (Baukunst) as architecture can be
known in German. (7)
Schinkel hoped that Prussian citizens who saw this would organize themselves into
the best they could be. Notice how the broad staircase is like ascending a mountain,
on which we may receive some wisdom. Schinkel hoped we might attain a higher
understanding of ourselves. Remember Gilly's painting also shows an elevated
monument for Berlin.
Schinkel said, "To turn something useful, practical, functional, into something
beautiful, that is architecture's duty." (8) (Mies van der Rohe would later subscribe
to that. He would use industrial steel I-beams for decoration, and turned them into
art.) Mies said, "Architecture begins when you put two bricks together." (9)
Knowing what Schinkel did at the Schauspeilhaus, and elsewhere with bricks, gives
Mies' sentence new meaning. And living through difficult times in Germany, Mies
said in 1938 (the year he moved to Chicago), "The long path from material through
function to creative work has only a single goal: to create order out of the desperate
confusion of our time." (10) That could have applied also to Schinkel, who lived
through the Napoleonic Wars.
12
Schinkel thought that the entirety of his theater, the whole, must be beautiful,
truthful, and strong. It looks like a theater, which furthers its sense of honesty. The
building even shows you its structure; you see how it stands up. Structure is the
essence of architecture; Schinkel believed that society should be equally well-
structured. (11) (Note - I'm from Chicago, once a very Germanic city, with similar
hopes of cultivating the middle class. Our "Schauspielhaus” would be Louis
Sullivan's great Auditorium Theater. Another "honest" structure - "form ever
follows function." I remember seeing Mortimer Adler, the founder of the "Great
Books" educational series (classics for the masses) there at a dance and music
performance, and we spoke of how uplifting it is to enter such a space. We spoke of
how Louis Sullivan designed with democratic principles in mind. Adler, and I, were
in the cheap seats, which still provided excellent acoustics and sight lines. Mies van
der Rohe spoke often of the Europeans who influenced him, such as Schinkel, Peter
Behrens and Henrik Berlage, and of the great influence that Frank Lloyd Wright's
1911 Wasmuth portfolio and its "free plans" had on him in Berlin. But he hardly
speaks of Louis Sullivan - although Mies lived and worked in Chicago from 1938
until his death in 1969 and Sullivan's great works were all around him.)
Nineteeth century Prussian intellectuals encouraged the study of Ancient Greek,
Latin or Hebrew. They thought this would help their citizens to form and construct
thoughts, and would develop reasoning skills, in addition to democratic ideals, and a
predilection for beauty and truth. (12)
13
Mies made this architectural. He said,
I am not working on architecture, I am working on architecture as a
language, and I think you have to have a grammar in order to have a
language. It has to be a living language, but still you come in the end to
grammar. It is a discipline. And then you can use it for normal purposes
and you speak in prose. And if you are good at that, you speak a
wonderful prose, and if you are really good, you can be a poet. (13)
Figure 9. Portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
And for him it had to speak the truth. “Architecture is the will of an epoch translated
into space,” he said. (14) And, "architecture is only possible in relation to
civilization.... Civilization is a process partly of the past, and partly of the present
and it is partly open to the future." (15) And another time, "civilization is given to
14
us from the past, all we can do is guide it. I don't think we can change it
fundamentally. We can do something with it in a good way or in a bad way." (16)
Mies was not interested in copying Gilly, Schinkel, or the Greeks. He was interested
in their exploration of fundamental architectural principles. In The Artless Word,
Fritz Neumeyer writes that after encountering the honest, clear and forward-looking
work of Henrik Petrus Berlage in Amsterdam in 1911, for example Berlage's
Amsterdam Stock Exchange, Mies knew he had to move past the influence of prewar
classicism. Mies admitted that, after his encounter with Berlage, he fought an inner
battle to liberate himself from “Schinkel's classicism.”
While publicly Mies said,
In 1910, Schinkel was still really the greatest representative in Berlin. His
Altes Museum in Berlin was a beautiful building – “you could learn
everything in architecture from it - and I tried to do that.” In his notebook
he wrote, “Schinkel, the greatest building master of classicism, represents
the end of an old and the beginning of a new time. With the Altes
Museum he built a waning period.” (17)
Paul Westheim wrote, already in 1927
Mies initially understood Schinkel as speaking a specific formal language,
as was generally held, but he soon discovered behind the classicist
Schinkel that other Schinkel who had been, as to meaning, technology,
and craftsmanship, the most eminent practical building master of his time,
one who was never prevented by his ideals of the antique from planning
his buildings as clearly and simply arising out of their proper frame of
purpose. Mies... penetrates to the specifically architectonic in Schinkel;
the classicizing formal language, the mere temporal aspect of Schinkel,
becomes irrelevant. (18)
That was just before Mies unveiled the 1929 Barcelona Pavilion. By then he had
15
transformed his understanding of Schinkel's ideas (and those of the man Mies
worked for from 1908 - 1912, another architect inventing modernity, yet operating in
a neo-classical model, Peter Behrens.) By the time he designed the Barcelona
Pavilion, Mies sought to create flowing spaces in a more dynamic, abstracted and
modern way. And by now building for Mies was "basically a spiritual
problem." (19)
By the time Mies van der Rohe designs S.R. Crown Hall - the building for the
architecture school he ran at the Illinois Institute of Technology - in the early 1950's,
he is much older, and has lived as an emigre in America for more than ten years. We
shall see how he re-adopts classical symmetry and other formal aspects from
Schinkel that obviously made such an impact on him that he never forgot them and
was able to draw on their images, across an ocean and the decades. The Barcelona
Pavilion may be pretty, dynamic and avant-garde; contemporary-classical Crown
Hall is all that and much more powerful and timeless.
In order to understand Mies van der Rohe's Crown Hall in Chicago, let's trace
perhaps Mies' own thought and return to Berlin and to the ideas of Karl Friedrich
Schinkel and Schinkel's Altes Museum.
16
Figure 10. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany, 1828.
After the retreat of Napoleon's forces, but with the new ideals of the French
Revolution, Prussia needed an art museum in which the public could view the royal
collections. The leaders had long talked of building one and Schinkel was usually in
on the discussions. In the early 1820's Schinkel, who held an official post as
Director of the Prussian Oberbaudeputation (essentially the Superintendent of all
state-sponsored construction), took it upon himself to design one and to choose the
site. Humboldt wanted it near Berlin University (now called Humboldt University)
so the art could be part of the students Bildung (formation.) It faces Berlin's castle
(political power) and neighbors the cathedral (religious power). (20)
17
Schinkel did not want a closed sanctuary. He wanted the public to feel wanted. He
settled on the idea of a Greek stoa. (21)
Figure 11. Greek stoa, superimposition of a digital model of the Ionic Stoa of
Miletus over the existing ruins. (www.learningsites.com)
The stoa in Ancient Greece served the public as a covered walkway, or was used for
shops. As at the Schauspielhaus the way the entry scoops up the space in front is
hard to resist. Again, one is elevated by the experience of the architecture, and by
the event it holds. The stair landing at the top, before entering the museum, recalls
Gilly's monument to Friedrich the Great. (22) Mies will take note.
18
Schinkel did not want to directly copy Ancient Greek work. He wanted to
understand their systems of harmony and proportion. He took from them the
importance of making ones buildings understandable. People should see the
fundamental ordering system. (23)
Mies will do the very same. He believed that technology dominated the present and
would continue to dominate and also define the coming epoch.
(Technology) is a real historic movement- one of the great movements
which shape and represent their epoch. It can be compared only with the
Classic discovery of man as a person, the Roman will to power, and the
religious movement of the Middle Ages. (24)
Mies said in 1950. Let's look at his work.
19
Figure 12. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, The Seagram Building, New York City, 1958.
20
It is famous as the first tall tower set back from the street. This adds to its
monumentality. Mies learned this trick from Schinkel. Schinkel's little guardhouse
in Berlin (Neue Wache) for which Mies once redesigned the interior, gains great
power by being set back from the street.
Let's look at Mies' now iconic Barcelona chair
Figure 13. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,
“Barcelona” chair, 1929.
21
See a relation in form to the chair for Glienecke Castle, designed around 1826 by
Schinkel?
Figure 14. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, chair for Glienecke Castle, Germany, c. 1826.
22
And a similarity in form and materials to this chair by Schinkel.
Figure 15. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Cast Iron Garden Furniture for the Porch of the
Roman Baths; Sanssouci Gardens, Potsdam, Germany.
23
We are shown the structure in all three chairs. They're honest. In the Barcelona
chair the materials are, by common agreement, elevated to great art. Poetry.
Figure 16. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, (reconstruction) bed for Queen Louise's
bedroom at Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin. 1809-1810.
24
Here’s a daybed by Mies.
Figure 17. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, daybed
From 1950 - 1956 Mies worked on Crown Hall. It was to house the schools of design
(lower level) and the school of architecture (above ground) on the south Chicago
campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Mies chaired the architecture
25
school since about 1938. He had already designed most of IIT, beginning the
campus master plan in 1939.
Figure 18. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe showing a model of the mater plan for the
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Mies began designing the campus master plan
in 1939.
For Mies, designing this architecture school was almost like designing a cathedral.
He had grown up in Aachen, Charlemagne's city, and had gone to school as a boy at
the Cathedral school. There he saw the power of Architecture. It is the highest of
26
the art forms, if you believe Schinkel. And if Crown Hall is the temple, look who
plays the deity.
Figure 19. Portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe standing over a model of S.R.
Crown Hall.
Why do I say it comes from what we've seen of Schinkel and Gilly? First, the
building is turned away from the campus. You must walk around it to get to the
front stairs. Doing this you see at least three sides of the building and you consider
it. (25) Your rational mind is satisfied because the structure is honestly expressed,
your romantic mind is satisfied because the structure, the technology of our times,
has been turned into art.
27
Figure 20. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, showing an I-beam
on the elevation.
28
Elevated into art, Schinkel might say. There is an Enlightenment-era, Schinkel-
esque lesson here for the citizens, for the students. Mies loved the I-beam because it
cast shadows into the indentations. Much like, the fluting of a Greek column.
You seek to enter Crown Hall, but as you circumambulate it and as the I-beams line
up they seem to form a solid wall. You are made to think about how this building
was constructed and assembled. Such contemplation would be useful and formative
for any citizen- architecture is an essential part of cultivation- but it would be
especially useful for the architecture students who approach Crown Hall to go to
architecture school!
Schinkel gave similar lessons on construction in the panels under the first floor
windows on the way to the Bauakademie (Academy of Architecture, built 1832 -
1835) that Schinkel directed in Berlin. (26)
29
Figure 21. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, designs for the entrance to the
Bauakademie (Academy of Architecture), Berlin, Germany, 1832 – 1835.
30
Many people have wondered about the doors into Crown Hall.
Figure 22. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, showing the main (south)
entrance.
They are a pair with a large space between them. This is not typical for Mies. Is he
keeping costs down by using off-the-shelf materials? Probably true. But this must
have been acceptable to him also because, the paired doors, with the wide space in
between, is an homage to Schinkel’s Bauakademie.
31
Figure 23. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Bauakademie (Academy of Architecture), main
entrance, Berlin, Germany, (1832 – 1835. Demolished.)
We were on the path of approach to Crown Hall. The way up to this "temple" recalls
the one Gilly designed for his monument to Friedrich the Great. It's an Ancient
Greek technique. You follow a similar path up the Acropolis in Athens to see the
Parthenon. You wind up the mountain, and doing so see nature, country and city.
Schinkel uses it at some villas he designed in Potsdam. You think about the building
you wish to enter. You consider it. You desire it. When you can't have it
immediately, you desire it more. The plaza Mies put in front of the Seagram
Building serves the same role.
32
Crown Hall is elevated. Chicago is flat. As flat as Berlin. So Mies raised the
building on a plinth. As Gilly and Schinkel did for their important works. The other
Mies building at IIT hug the ground. This one is his finest. He will base it on
Ancient Greek architecture, as Schinkel taught him to do. Remember, this is an
architecture school. The study of the building art is a high pursuit for Mies.
Outside you see the structure. The trusses on top that hold up the roof. The columns
around the perimeter. When the building code requires a corner column to be
fireproofed in concrete, Mies will stop the steel outside the concrete from hitting the
ground. He wants to be honest with you. As Schinkel instructed.
33
Figure 24. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, corner detail.
34
Turn the corner, and you arrive finally at the way up.
Figure 25. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, full façade, main entrance,
(south facade), showing the travertine steps.
The steps at Crown are of travertine. As Gilly showed us the procession of
architecture history in his monument, and Schinkel moved up the Schauspielhaus
with increasingly more refined materials, so Mies lays his modern steel and glass
structure down on a bed of Roman travertine. (Doing so may also honor his father,
the stonemason.)
The steps at Crown Hall are broad and dramatic and dignified, like Schinkel's; and
the elevated monument above beckons you because something inside of you, having
just seen the honesty and the eloquence of the outside, wants to enter the sanctuary
inside and you think enlightenment must reside within.
35
You walk up a few steps. If the day is brightly sunny and the light bounces off the
white travertine and back up into the sky, the entrance area can get so bright that a
human ascending seems to dematerialize and turn into spirit. You can almost see
them with all the light bouncing around; they look (and feel) weightless and
supported by the suns rays from above.
After five steps (a number the Greeks used often) Mies sets you on a platform. You
pause. You are somewhere between the earth, and the building (or temple, if you
will.) Even if you continue walking, you do not rise closer to the heights of the
knowledge contained in this building. He wants you to consider, to appreciate.
Maybe to think if you are worthy, or perhaps, if needed, to cleanse yourself a bit
before you attempt to create architecture in this architecture school. For Mies
architecture is an exalted profession. It is everything to him. He spent a life
considering it and he is not going to just give away his knowledge.
Plus, that wisdom does not belong on the ground. The ground on which we conduct
the trivialities of our daily lives. The wisdom belongs on a mountaintop. This being
the flat prairie in Chicago, we'll at least set the building on a plinth. As Schinkel
placed his monuments.
You may now rise a bit higher, and approach the front door. They are glass, Mies
believed in using the materials of our time, steel and glass.
36
And then you enter. Since the roof is hung from the trusses on top, it allows for a
nearly column free interior, giving great freedom.
Figure 26. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, main entrance, (south
facade), showing the trusses above the roof.
Even the trusses, which Mies "elevates" into sculpture, recall Schinkel's horses and
horsemen atop the Altes Museum. As we know, “Freedom” is an important concept
for the three artists we are examining. Once inside Crown Hall you are free to go
where you like.
37
Figure 27. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking south.
38
Enlightenment!
Figure 28. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking south.
39
Figure 29. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking south.
As the glass on the ground floor (except by the doors) is translucent,
one's view is again directed upward, to an even more elevated plane. Indeed, around
Crown Hall Mies’ landscape architect Alfred Caldwell placed cockspur hawthorns,
honey locusts and other trees.
40
Schinkel was interested in bringing nature in. He originally proposed a glass wall in
the Neue Wache, so one could see the continuation of the columns and have a visual
continuity between the outdoors and the indoors. He believed that a building, a
construction, should continue the constructions of nature. Again, continuity. Mies
said of his House in the Alps project (unbuilt) of 1934, "The mountain is my house."
(27)
In the photo directly above, of Crown Hall, one sees how Mies abstracts columns
and walls, and representations of the trees, until they are one.
Figure 30. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior, looking northeast,
showing trees specified by landscape architect Alfred Caldwell.
41
Here it's seen at night, when, with the streetlights behind the trees, and a little wind,
the windows become living shoji screens.
Figure 31. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, interior,
looking west on a particularly luminous night.
This adds to the calm feeling there.
42
The columns are abstracted nature. After all, the first house beams were trees. The
lower, translucent half shows a representation of nature, above, through the clear
glass, we see nature itself. The focus on what is real and what is signified or
represented also interested the Enlightenment thinkers.
The contemplation of man and the contemplation of nature are the two activities by
which we elevate ourselves. The Greeks, and the German neo-Classicists understood
this. (28) In Crown Hall, since the windows around us are translucent, we cannot
see outside, and so we will contemplate man. Above the false horizon line that Mies
has created with the band that goes around and separated translucent glass from
clear, looking up and out, we have our view elevated again. We shall contemplate
nature and cultivate ourselves. Unser Bildung.
The students would look out and see tree tops. Ancient Greeks said the gods reside
in the tree tops. The task of the architect, for them, is to make a dwelling so
beautiful, that the gods will want to come down to earth and join us. (29) Mies gave
his students a constant reminder of that, plus inspiration, and development of their
formation, through his architecture at Crown Hall.
43
The plan is in three parts, with a central sacred area as in a Greek temple.
Figure 32. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, plan.
44
And like Schinkel's Altes Museum (1823-1830).
Figure 33. Karl Friedrich Schinkel Altes Museum, plan.
The Greeks placed a statue in the center- of the god to whom the temple was
dedicated. Schinkel put a great Pantheon-like rotunda, circled by columns. The idea
was for an empty space, in which museum-goers would "decompress" before
communing with art.
Mies' light and power above remind one of what Schinkel sought in his Altes
Museum.
45
Figure 37. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum,
interior view of the entrance (drawing).
A photograph of this space also leads us to Mies. The elegance, the proportions, the
on-its-way-to minimalism railing, how the outside is brought in, and natural light is
brought inside also.
46
Figure 38. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum,
interior view of the entrance (photograph).
Does Mies' stair rail to descend to the lower level in Crown Hall remind you of
Schinkel's?
47
Figure 39. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, stair rail.
48
Here's Schinkel's drawing of the staircase, seen straight on.
Figure 40. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, stair.
It is difficult to see in the photo below, of the north side, the rear of Crown Hall, but
can you see the staircase in the center? It's very similar to the one above. The top of
the staircase meets an open viewing platform, large enough on which to linger. To
view out. To consider your "next step." You make two ninety-degree turns to use
the staircase. One ninety-degree turn to take the first step. One when you leave the
staircase. With each turn, we leave some of our past experience behind. And
prepare for a new one, a new field of view.
49
Figure 41. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall,
rear (north) elevation, showing the staircase.
Schinkel’s Altes Museum stair, photographed from the side,
Figure 42. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, stair.
50
And Mies at Crown Hall, photographed from the side.
Figure 43. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall,
rear (north) elevation, showing stairs.
51
Figure 34. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, rotunda, (engraving).
52
Figure 35. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, rotunda, (photograph).
53
Figure 36. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, looking northwest, at the
“empty” center.
Mies will do something very similar in the center of Crown Hall. He put
physically nothing in the center. In the center of the work, we feel the spirit. Here it
is, radiating outward from Crown Hall. You physically feel the power of space.
And light. And you learn the power of things done right. Lessons from buildings.
From the Greeks, to Gilly and Schinkel in Berlin, to Mies in Chicago.
54
Here’s a stair by Schinkel, at Redern Palace (1833).
Figure 44. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Redern Palace (18281833), stair.
And a stair by Mies, earlier than Crown Hall, in IIT’s Alumni Memorial Hall
(1945/1946). (30)
Figure 45. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Alumni Memorial Hall, IIT, stair,
Chicago, USA, 1946.
55
Mies could not forget what he saw in Berlin.
Figure 46. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Charlottenhof Palace,
Berlin, Germany 1829, exterior stair.
56
Figure 47. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Barcelona Pavilion, 1929,
exterior stair.
As Mies turned 75 years old in Chicago, he received a letter from Berlin's senator for
building and housing. In it were the requisite congratulations, and the Senator
expressed hope that Mies might be convinced to design a building for the city that
meant so much to him - Berlin. The Senator gave Mies several possibilities,
including the chance to build "The Gallery of the Twentieth Century and art
exhibitions." Mies agreed and he was commissioned. Schinkel had the old Museum
in Berlin, Mies would have the new.
57
Mies chose the pavilion building type. S.R. Crown Hall was his prototype; he also
re-purposed designs from an unbuilt museum he had prepared for Schweinfurt,
Germany (1960-1961) and from a project of his for a Bacardi Rum Administration
building in Santiago de Cuba- a project abandoned when Fidel Castro came to power
there. Does that staircase look familiar now?
Figure 48. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bacardi Rum Administration Building,
1957-1960, for Cuba, (unbuilt).
58
Mies would produce a masterpiece for Berlin.
Figure 49. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New National Gallery,
Berlin, 1968, exterior stair.
59
Figure 50. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New National Gallery,
Berlin, exterior/interior.
60
Figure 51. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New National Gallery,
Berlin, exterior/interior.
61
Figure 52. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New National Gallery,
Berlin, interior.
62
Figure 53. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New National Gallery,
Berlin, exterior, with plaza.
63
It's hard to miss the comparison with Schinkel's Altes Museum. The horizontality.
The "floating" heavily coffered roof. Mies creates a grid, announcing his modernity,
but also in a very democratic gesture. (31) The grid erases hierarchy. As in
Schinkel's civic institutions, this one too is separated from the city as an object, and a
part of it. It's up on a very Schinkelesque plinth, with a broad staircase to connect it
to the city. Mies' great use of glass (which also connects the institution to the city)
fulfills Schinkel's dream of transparency and of bringing the outside in. Mies' side
staircase (seen below) is also very much in the manner of Schinkel.
Figure 54. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie, New National Gallery,
Berlin, exterior stair detail.
64
Wolfgang Pehnt writes, "Mies called Schinkel's Altes Museum a "magnificent
building." When he himself had to erect a museum in Berlin, the Neue
Nationalgalerie (1962-1968), the master of twentieth-century architecture resorted to
means that are completely reminiscent of the master of the early nineteenth century:
the discipline in binding the axes, the dignified form of the gentle flight of stairs, the
temple-like raising-up on a building base, the seemingly floating coffered ceiling,
and the idea of the city loggia and of the column or pillar walk which was laid before
the whole side - or in Mies van der Rohe's eight-pillar construction around the whole
building.
Comparison with Schinkel's design of a summer residence in Orianda makes the
parallel even clearer. In Schinkel's design, a templelike, almost transparent pavilion
sits enthroned upon a substructure, which, like the foundation of the Nationalgalerie-
could serve as the home of a museum (in the case of Orianda, one for ancient art.)
The volume of Schinkel's Werke der hoeheren Baukunst that contains the designs
for Orianda lay at hand in Mies van der Rohe's studio, according to his collaborator
Sergius Ruegensberg." (32)
So, one of the first of Mies' projects (unbuilt), the competition project for a
monument to Bismarck (1910) shows the influence of Schinkel, and more than fifty
years later, for his New National Gallery, Mies is still coming to terms with the
nineteenth-century neo-classical master.
65
Figure 55. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, competition entry for a monument to
Chancellor Bismarck, 1910.
For Karl Friedrich Schinkel, classical architecture allowed a stillness, a calm, it
allowed a person to find her or his equilibrium in a difficult world. Mies gave a
temple of zen-like calm to his students in Crown Hall. He wished to illuminate their
spirits. Mies said, "The history of architecture is the history of man's struggle for
light, the history of the window." (33) Light is the spirit. It is also enlightenment.
Mies' work, like Schinkel's enlightens us.
We saw in the latter half of the twentieth century that Schinkel's great uplifting,
elevating, cultivating remake of Berlin was not enough to prevent that society from
unifying as a mob, forgetting all Enlightenment principles, and committing mass
atrocities. I also do not believe that Mies' architecture in Chicago has necessarily
made those who experience it better people. Many of today's starchitects don't try to
66
uplift the souls and the beings of the citizens. And that is far worse. With, I think,
serious negative consequences.
Fritz Neumeyer writes in The Artless Word, that modern women and men must
overcome the "loss of center" by creating a new structural framework of values. Is
that not what Crown Hall is? Nothing in the center, but spirit and space. And
around you- the structure, the framework, literally, to make a life. Like the
Parthenon in Athens, it appears as timeless and eternal as the truths it embodies. It is
rigorously honest, essential, and of our epoch. The high art in its design, the sublime
proportions, the harmonies and rhythms in this building, the calm stillness, offer you
the framework for a cultivated life; a life worth living. An enlightened life.
67
Figure 56. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall,
with students, looking south.
###
68
To close: a photo of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, on the Acropolis, towards the end
of his life, looking back in time.
Figure 57. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, 1959.
(Private Collection via F. Schulze.)
69
A photo of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, resting on Antiquity.
Figure 58. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, at Epidaurus.
(Collection A. James Speyer via F. Schulze.)
70
ENDNOTES
(1) Bergdoll, Barry. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia. Rizzoli,
1994.
(2) Puente, Moises, Editor. Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Princeton
Architectural Press, 2008.
(3) Bergdoll, Barry. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia. Rizzoli,
1994.
(4) ibid.
(5) Snodin, Michael, Editor, Karl Friedrich Schinkel: A Universal Man. Yale
University Press, 1991.
(6) ibid.
(7) Bergdoll, Barry. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia. Rizzoli,
1994.
(8) Steffens, Martin. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, An Architect in the Service of Beauty.
Taschen, 2003.
(9) Neumeyer, Fritz. The Artless Word. MIT Press, 1991.
(10) Blake, Peter. The Master Builders: Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe, Frank
Lloyd Wright, Knopf, 1960.
(11) Bergdoll, Barry. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia. Rizzoli,
1994.
(12) ibid.
(13) Neumeyer, Fritz. The Artless Word. MIT Press, 1991.
(14) ibid.
(15) Puente, Moises. Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Princeton
Architectural Press, 2008.
(16) ibid.
71
(17) Neumeyer, Fritz. The Artless Word. MIT Press, 1991.
(18) Westheim, Paul. Mies van der Rohe: Entwicklung eines Architekten.
(Development of an Architect) In: Das Kunstblatt, vol. 11, no. 2, February
1927, quoted in Neumeyer.
(19) Zimmerman, Claire. Mies van der Rohe: The Structure of Space, Taschen, 2006.
(20) Bergdoll, Barry. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia. Rizzoli,
1994.
(21) ibid.
(22) ibid.
(23) Snodin, Michael, Editor. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: A Universal Man. Yale
University Press, 1991.
(24) Puente, Moises. Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, Princeton
Architectural Press, 2008.
(25) Thanks to Prof. Kevin Harrington, Professor of Architecture History at IIT,
who first explained this to me, at Crown Hall; and with whom (with his
wife Elaine, also an historian) I later enjoyed walking around many
Schinkel and Mies building in Berlin.
(26) Schinkel, Karl Friedrich. Sammlung Architecktonischer Entwurfe, ("Collection
of Architectural Designs"), Princeton Architectural Press, 1989.
(27) Blaser, Werner. Mies van der Rohe, The Art of Structure, Whitney Library of
Design, 1994.
(28) Bergdoll, Barry. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia. Rizzoli,
1994.
(29) Harrington, in conversation with Lifson.
(30) Tegethoff, Wolf, Mies van der Rohe, the Villas and Country Houses. New
York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1985.
(31) Krauss, Rosalind E., The Originality of the Avant‐Garde and Other
Modernist Myths, MIT, 2002.
72
(32) Zukowsky, John, Editor. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: The Drama of Architecture,
Wasmuth, 1994.
(a) It is now used as a Konzerthaus and is the home of the Berlin Symphony
Orchestra.
73
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bergdahl, R. The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a
Conservative Ideology, 1770-1848, Princeton, 1988.
Bergdoll, Barry. Karl Friedrich Schinkel. An Architecture for Prussia.
Blake, Peter. The Master Builders: Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Knopf, 1960.
Breuilly, John, Editor. 19th-Century Germany: Politics, Culture, and Society 1800-
1918, Hodder Arnold, 2001.
Carter, Rand. Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, "Karl Friedrich Schinkel: The Last
Great Architect," (Carter originally published as a prefatory essay
in: Collection of Architectural Designs by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (Chicago:
Exedra Books Incorporated, 1981).
Cohen, Jean-Louis. Mies van der Rohe, E & FN Spon, 1996.
Hilpert, Thilo. Mies in Postwar Germany. Project 5207 Unbuilt. The Mannheim
Theater. E.A. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig, 2001.
Krauss, Rosalind E. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths,
MIT, 2002.
Lambert, Phyllis et al. Mies in America. H.N. Abrams, 2001.
Mertins, Detlef, Editor. The Presence of Mies. Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.
Neumeyer, Fritz. The Artless Word. Translated by Mark Jarzombek. MIT Press,
1991.
Norberg-Schultz, Christian. “Talks with Mies van de Rohe,” L’Architecture
d’aujourd’hui, No. 79, September 1958.
Peik, Susan M., & Schinkel, Karl Friedrich. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Aspects of his
Work=Aspekte seines Werks, Edition Axel Menges, 2001.
Riley, Terence & Bergdoll, Barry. Mies in Berlin. New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 2001.
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich. Sammlung Architecktonischer Entwurfe ("Collection of
Architectural Designs"), Princeton Architectural Press, 1989.
74
Schulze, Franz. Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography. The University of
Chicago Press, 1985.
Steffens, Martin. Schinkel, Taschen, 2003.
Tegethoff, Wolf, Mies van der Rohe. The Villas and Country Houses. New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 1985.
Zimmerman, Claire. Mies van der Rohe, 1886-1969: the structure of space. Taschen,
2006.
Zukowsky, John, Editor. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: The Drama of Architecture,
Wasmuth, 1994.
Figure 59. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, S.R. Crown Hall, night view,
looking southwest.
-- END --
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This paper examines the influence of German architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781 - 1841) on a later German architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 - 1969). Both worked in Berlin, Mies van der Rohe (known as Mies) worked during the later part of his life in Chicago. Schinkel and Mies believed that "Truth" and "Beauty" should be expressed in architecture. Schinkel was the foremost neoclassical German architect, Mies was a founder of Modernism. This paper shows how many of Schinkel's ideas and forms were absorbed by Mies, transformed and then found their way into Mies’s buildings, urbanism and even his furniture design. Schinkel was informed by the Enlightenment and believed that the right kind of buildings could encourage good citizenship and more cultured individuals. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe believed the same, and updated the ideas by using more abstraction and modern materials.
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Lifson, Edward
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How truth and beauty moved from the classical to the modern
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08/10/2009
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