6 Introduction Critical Realism: Life and Form 14 Apprenticeship in Reform 20 Riehl House: Country House Critical Realism 32 Bismarck Memorial: Form and Space 44 Kröller-Müller Villa: Living Geometry Avant-garde: Art and Life 58 Glass Skyscraper: New Beginnings 82 Good Forms for New Types 92 Esters and Lange Houses: New Language 114 Weissenhofsiedlung: Urban Montage Task: Mastering Modernity 138 Barcelona Pavilion: Spiritualizing Technology 168 Tugendhat House: An Elevated Personal Life 182 Neue Wache: In the World and Against It 194 Bauhaus Education 210 Reichsbank: In Dark Times Organic Architecture 232 Resor House: Autonomy 244 AIT/IIT: Open Campus 258 IIT: Clear Construction Unfolding Structure 282 Farnsworth to Crown Hall: Clear Span 314 860–880 Lake Shore Drive: High Rise 338 Seagram Building: Dark Building 364 50 x 50 House to New National Gallery: Variations and Permutations 400 Lafayette Park: City Landscape 444 Event Space: Living Life Large 468 Notes 506 Bibliography 530 Index 007 Ludwig Mies, Riehl House, Potsdam-Neubabelsberg, 1906–7; entrance from the upper walled garden 008 Ludwig Mies at the Riehl house, ca.1912 008 007 In 1906 Bruno Paul recommended Mies to the philosopher Alois Riehl Whereas the neighbouring villas were built as Italian or German Re- became the locus for an alternative way of life. Critical of placing Riehl House: Country and his wife, Sophie, who were looking to build a quiet house for naissance icons set within miniature picturesque gardens, the Riehl houses as features in the centre of their lots and treating the garden summers, weekends and their imminent retirement in the fashionable House was designed by Mies as a simple neo-Biedermeier block as a residual fragment of a picturesque landscape, Muthesius argued Berlin suburb of Potsdam-Neubabelsberg 008. Riehl was a celebrat- adapted to the local vernacular. Its rectangular mass of light ochre that gardens should be designed to be lived in. They should be open- House Critical Realism ed professor of philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in stucco was surmounted by a steeply peaked gable roof with eyebrow air equivalents to living rooms that could be used for dining, bathing Berlin, and the Riehls became Mies’s first patrons. Although the dormers 007, 010–012. Devoid of superfluous ornament, the house and even sleeping 016. The Riehl House was included in the second reasons for the clients’ trust in this relatively untested young man was defined by the tautness and geometric clarity of its volumes and edition of Muthesius’s book Landhaus und Garten (Country House remain unclear, Mies was sufficiently confident in his experience to the robust detailing of its balconies, windows and doors. Ornament and Garden) in 1910.3 take up the challenge. Like the architect, the Riehls were clearly aware was reserved for the centre of the entrance front, which features an of the reform movements then influencing the design of housing and elegant stucco interlace of wreaths. On the interior bright simple The functional reciprocity between inside and outside was to be the applied arts, but they eschewed the idea of marrying art and life rooms were well proportioned; constructed of modest yet durable matched formally by subsuming both building and garden within an – an idea that had underpinned Jugendstil’s efforts to increase the materials, they were well built yet spare. For all its studied modesty overarching architectural unity 009. The garden reform movement sensuous pleasure of everyday experience. They also eschewed the and simplicity, however, the house is remarkably subtle and complex. promoted an ‘architectonic’ garden, which featured axial planning, pursuit of a total work of art. Rather, the couple took a more ascetic geometric planting and lattice trellises that made the garden more approach, similar to the sober and practical Arts and Crafts movement Rotated on the site and pushed to one side, the building does not face architectural. At the same time, natural species, sturdy perennials and in England. They embraced the idea of the country house as a build- the street directly but rather recedes to make room for a formal ivy were reintroduced into common use to display nature’s wildness ing type directed at achieving a healthy and calm way of life, lived on flower garden, which serves as a space of reception and orientation. against the foil of mathematical form. This kind of garden was devel- the land. The house was to provide not only an antidote to the con- As a result the path leading from the street to the house first offers a oped in Germany by Paul Schultze-Naumburg (1869–1949) as well as gested and insalubrious metropolis but also an alternative to the panoramic view of the landscape beyond. The level plane on which Muthesius and in Austria by Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867–1908) and typical suburban villa: it was to provide a place in which life and both house and garden sit was created by terracing the site, which Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956). conversation could freely unfold. slopes dramatically down towards the picturesque Lake Griebnitz and the extensive landscape park of Potsdam. While the long axis of the Writing just after the turn of the century, Muthesius recognized that The Riehls’ relationship with Mies went much further than is typical formal garden links the street with the distant view, the cross axis the country house was still too expensive to be available to anyone of the client-architect relationship, for they treated him as a son. They leads, on the left, to the entrance of the house and, on the right, to the but the elite. Its dissemination would come in time but was contingent nurtured his personal intellectual development, sent him on a study stairway and lower gardens. on the reform of land tenure, the end of land speculation, improve- trip to Italy and introduced him to intellectual society in Berlin. Through ments to transportation (especially the railway), and the integration them Mies also developed a close friendship with Alois Riehl’s pro- The site’s design exemplified the planning principles promoted for of industrialized methods of house construction. Given the opportu- tégé Eduard Spranger, whom the couple also considered an adopted country houses by Hermann Muthesius, who had studied the emer- nity to organize a model housing estate for the German Werkbund in son.1 The house, completed in 1907, proved to be a remarkably ac- gence of the type in England and its suitability for Germany 015. 1927 – the famous Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart – Mies initially complished debut for a twenty year old from the provinces, who lacked Muthesius characterized metropolitan life in terms of hotel living, envisioned an entire fabric of country houses with integrated gardens higher education and had barely two years in Berlin. Dependent on congestion, disorder and alienation from the land. In contrast, the for middle-class families. existing conventions, it was nevertheless an ingenious transformation country house offered landownership, clean air, quiet and a calm of precedents and contained many ideas that Mies would develop in setting for personal and family life. He favoured spending evenings Although scholars and critics have paid little attention to Mies’s gar- new directions later. The house was immediately published and rec- at home playing the piano over attending concerts as more educa- dens – some even edited them out of photographs and drawings – ognized by critics.2 tional and character building. For the bourgeoisie the country house Barry Bergdoll recently showed how profoundly important they were 20 Critical Realism: Life and Form Riehl House: Country House Critical Realism 21 009 Riehl House; site plan with ground floor plan 010 Riehl House; view from street 011 Riehl House; view from the lower garden 012 Riehl House; ground and upper floor plans 013 Karl Foerster, autochrome of the Riehl House garden terrace and panorama beyond; published in his Winter- harte Blütenstauden und Sträucher der Neuzeit (Hardy Blooming Shrubs and Bushes for Today), 1911 014 Riehl House; view of central, multipurpose hall, ca. 1907 009 010 012 013 014 011 22 Critical Realism: Life and Form Riehl House: Country House Critical Realism 23 020 Ludwig Mies, Bismarck Memorial project, Deutsches Dank (German Gratitude), Bingen, 1910 021 Ludwig Mies (third from right) at the studio of Peter Behrens in Neubabelsberg, ca. 1910; Walter Gropius is on the far left and Adolf Meyer is to his right 020 021 Seeking to expand his practice beyond furniture and interiors to include infused its walls, tables, chairs and chandeliers with animate energies, By 1905 the art critic Julius Meier-Graefe (1867–1935) would recognize Bismarck Memorial: entire buildings, Bruno Paul hired the architect Paul Thiersch (1879– while the crystalline lines of the music room inscribed it with a radiance that Behrens had launched a new Renaissance with his designs for 1928) to manage his studio in 1907.1 Thiersch came from a family of bursting from the surface of precious stones, rich woods, glass and the ‘Garden and Art Exhibition’ in Düsseldorf (1904), the ‘Northwest Munich architects and had been working in Düsseldorf for Peter mirrors in a gesture of transformation from within. Both vegetal and German Art Exhibition’ at Oldenburg (1904–5) 023, 024 and the read- Form and Space Behrens, whose new classicism had greatly impressed him.2 Like crystalline geometries served to symbolize purity and regeneration. ing room of the Düsseldorf City Library (1904). This was not, he said, Behrens, Wilhelm Kreis (1873–1955), Fritz Schumacher (1869–1947) a literal reprise of the Italian Renaissance, nor an evocation of Rome, and other young architects, Thiersch longed for a strong monumen- When Behrens moved to Düsseldorf in 1903 to direct its School of but the expression of a more universal classicism – rational, elemen- tal architecture that would be in tune with the rhythm of the times yet Applied Arts he abandoned Jugendstil, with its organic allusions, tal, Sachlich (objective).6 Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) suggested that would fulfil a desire for antiquity’s feeling for life, reuniting spirit, soul emphasis on uniqueness and craft, and elite patronage.