Reprinted U.S.A./April 1 980 86G880 Lake Shore Driveas Seen from the Shore of Lake Michigan
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CITY OF CHICAGO Jane M, Byrne, Mayor COMMISSION ON CHICAGO HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURAL LANDMARKS Ira J, Bach, Chairman John W. Baird Joseph Benson Jerome R. Butler, Jr. Ruth Moore Garbe Martin R. Murphy Harold K. Skramstad; Jr, William M, McLenahan, Director Room 800 320 N. Clark Street Chicago, Illinois 60610 (3r2) 744-3200 Prinred U.S.A./January 197 7 Reprinted U.S.A./April 1 980 86G880 Lake Shore Driveas seen from the shore of Lake Michigan. (Michael J. Pado, photographer) 860-880 LAKE SHORE DRIVE Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect Associate architects: Pace Associates Holsman, Holsman, Klekamp and Taylor Completed in 1951 Staff for this publication Joan C. Pomaranc, writer and designer assistant Janice V. Woody, production The buildings of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe revived in house that was actualiy built. According to a contemporary Chicago the tradition of rational design and clear expres- critic, the house was "so faultless that no one would guess sion of structure which had developed in this city during that it is the first independent work of a young architect." the 1880s and 1890s and was later called the Chicago The design was in keeping with the traditional style of the school of architecture. The principles and achievements of region, but the way in which the traditional elements were the Chicago school were temporarily ignored as the move- combined, as well as the siting of the house on a steep ment faded from prominence during the first decades of slope, were evidence of the skiil of the young architect, the twentieth century, and their revitalization in the city of Mies worked independently for the next two years, and in their origin was to come by way of Europe. The first and 1909 went to work for Peter Behrens. Le Corbusier and most forceful demonstration of Mies's ideas for tall steel Walter Gropius, both of whom would later achieve archi- and glass structures is found in the two apartment buildings tectural reputations as great as Mies's, also worked in the at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, built between 1949 and office during the three years Mies stayed with Behrens. 1951. No other buildings by Mies had so immedi4te or so Behrens, who was a designer as well as an architect, strong an impact on his American contemporaries, and the designed both products and structures for the A.E.G., the influence of the two buildings was to pervade much of German eiectrical industry, and from him Mies learned to modern architecture. appreciate the mutual influence that couid exist between architecture and industrial technology. Behrens was also designing large neo-classical buildings, usually for govern- mental agencies, based on the work of the greatest German architect of the nineteenth cenrury, Karl Friedrich Schink- el. To Behrens, and later to Mies, Schinkel's buiidings had a The Architect purity of form that was particularly relevant to the modern age in which architecture was becoming simpler and more Mies was born in the town of Aachen, Germany in 1886 straightforward. They also admired the way Schinkel placed and lived there for the first nineteen years of his life. his buildings on wide platforms, a technique which made Aachen had been established in the ninth century by the the structures more impressive. In addition to being in- emperor Charlemagne as the first capital of the Holy fluenced by the ideas of Schinkel and Behrens, Mies also Roman Empire. In the town, which was devastated during studied the work of the Dutch architect H. P. Berlage World War II, there were many medieval buildings that whom he encountered during a year spent working in deeply impressed Mies as a boy. Many years after leaving Holland. Berlage stressed the honest use of materials, espe- Aachen, Mies remembered the old buildings of his child- cially brick, and clear construction as the fundamental hood: principles of architecture. Under the influence of Berlage's ideas, Mies became increasingly dissatisfied with the neo- Few of them were importanr buildings. They classical overlays of Schinkel which he and Behrens had were mostly very simple, but very clear. I was im- been using. From Berlage, Mies learned to accept structure pressed by the strength of these buildings because as the essential element in architecture. they did not belong to any epoch. They had been Mies opened his own office in Berlin in 1913 and re- there for over a thousand years and were still im- turned to it after serving as an army engineer during the pressive, and nothing could change that. A11 the First Worid War. There was little actual building in Ger- great styles passed, but they were still there. They many after the war, but the political revolution which soon didn't lose anyrhing and they were still good ", followed was accompanied by a revolution in the arts, in- the day they were built. They were medieval build-", cluding architecture. Mies's experimental projects during ings, not with any speciai character, but they were these years were among the most reaIly buik. cruciai for modern archi- tecture. Between 1.9L9 and 1921,he developed sketches for Mies's father was a stonemason, and Mies often helped in two all-giass skyscrapers, one of twenty stories and the the family stonecutting shop. His early exposure to the other of thirty. These radically innovative, almost prescient practical side of building and his familiarity with the old drawirlgs were exhibited soon after they *er. mlde, "rrd stone buiidings of Aachen left Mies with a respect for and a they brought Mies ro the forefront of the modern move- working knowledge of buiiding materials which later ment. Peter Blake, in his biography of Mies, states that rhe marked his work and his teaching. sketches of the 1920s were so daring that ,,modern archi- After finishing grade school, Mies spent two years ar a tecture, quite literally, has not been the same since...For trade school while also working for a local builder as a un- here, with a single stroke of the pen, as it were, Mies laid paid apprentice. He then found work as a designer of the foundation for ali the great steel-and-metal skyscrapers plaster ornament in numerous styles for a firm that special- we s_e_e about us today." Thirty years later, these projects 'tzed in stucco decor. After three years, however, he decided would result in the two buildings at 860-880 take Siore that architecture was his main interest, and he went to Drive which were to have a stronger impact on contempo- work for a loca1 architect. In 1905, Mies moved to Berlin rary architecture than any other of his buildings. They where he worked for fwo architects who specialized in wouid be the first demonstration of what Mies was trying wood buildings, and from them Mies acquired a thorough to say in the drawings of the 1920s; they are the strongesr, understanding of that material. clearest, and as Blake puts it, "most deceptiveiy simple ex- In 1907, the twenty-one-year-old Mies designed his first pression of his ideas that he ever made," ln 1926, Mies was appointed the first vice-president of The columns stand out from the main wall plane which is the Deutsche Werlcbund, an organization created by a composed of horizontal windows and brick panels beneath group of architects, artists, and industrialists to improve the windows. The columns are stepped back as they rise to the quality of German product design. Three years later, the roof line and as the loads lessen. Mies had drawn two the German government selected Mies to design the German versions of the Promontory Apartments. One depicted the pavilion for an international exhibition to be held in concrete form actuaily used; the other showed a steel and Barcelona that year. Mies decided that the building itself, glass exterior wall on the long elevations, the first example rather than any displays within it, would constitute the ex- of his use of the curtain wall that was to appear frequently hibit. He also designed several pieces of furniture to be in later projects. placed within the pavilion, and the chair he designed, While the Promontory was under construction, Mies de- thereafter called the "Barcelona chair," has become famous. signed the two buildings at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, his The resulting small, one-story structure, with its rich mate- second project for Herbert Greenwald. This plan developed rials and its open plan, represented a new kind of s,patial from the alternate version of the Promontory and from the composition and showed Mies's greatness as an architect. drawings of the 1920s for two giass towers. Construction As a result of his success with the Barcelona Pavilion, of the two buildings, generally referred to simply as 860, Mies was appointed director of the Bauhaus the following began in December, 1949. The twenty-six-story rectangular year. Originaily known as the School of Arts and Crafts, the towers are set a short distance apart, with their long sides institution had been transformed after the war under the at right angles to each other, and are connected by a can- leadership of Walter Gropius who renamed it the Bauhaus opy. The apartment floors are carried on a steel skeleton (the House of Building), in which architects, craftsmen, art- whose measurements are the governing principles for the ists, and designers could work together. The school was exterior design of the structure. The long sides of the located in Dessau, but in 1-932, when the Nazis gained control of the province and began to accuse the school of being "un-German," Mies moved the Bauhaus to Berlin.