Copyright by Xiangnan Xiong 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Xiangnan Xiong Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: From Am Karlsbad 24 to the Tugendhat House: Mies van der Rohe’s Quest for a New Form of Living Committee: Christopher Long, Supervisor Mirka Benes Greg Castillo Richard Cleary Francesco Passanti From Am Karlsbad 24 to the Tugendhat House: Mies van der Rohe’s Quest for a New Form of Living by Xiangnan Xiong, B.Arch; M. Arch Hist. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2016 Acknowledgements I would like to, first and foremost, acknowledge Christopher Long, my advisor and the supervisor of this project. He welcomed me to UT in fall 2011 and has directed me to pursue my interest with scholarly rigor and originality ever since. He read chapters of this dissertation multiple times and offered insightful revising suggestions. The completion of this project would not have been possible without his dedicated and thoughtful training for me. I am grateful to other committee members for benefiting my project in various ways. This project was developed from a seminar paper I wrote for Richard Cleary. I wish to thank him for his timely encouragement and for inspiring me to approach things in different ways. Courses with Mirka Benes stimulated my interest in cultural aspects of architecture, and conversations with Francesco Passanti added depth to my work. Greg Castillo, at UC Berkeley, motivated me to enrich my dissertation by drawing knowledge from a variety of disciplines. I thank the Interlibrary Service of University of Texas Libraries. Its Research Library Cooperative Program enabled me to use the libraries at Stanford University so that I could write my dissertation at home in California. Its Get A Scan service delivered a scanned copy of my requested materials that I had otherwise no access to. A special word of thanks goes to Staff at Library of Congress Manuscript Department and Paul Galloway at Museum of Modern Art for granting me access to Ludwig Mies van iv der Rohe Papers and the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Archives respectively. I wish also to thank Daisy Dai, Yichen Zhou and Linlin Cheng, friends and then Economics doctoral students at University of Maryland, for accommodating and entertaining me when I consulted archives in DC. This project and my study at UT was partially funded and supported by a variety of sources, including a Recruiting Fellowship, Continuing Student Fellowships and travel fellowships provided by Architecture School; a Graduate School Summer Fellowship provided by the University of Texas at Austin; teaching assistantships under Christopher Long and Richard Cleary; and a research assistantship with Christopher Long. I want to thank my husband Yikan Chen for understanding my struggle as a doctoral student, supporting my study financially, and remaining my solid connection to the real world. v From Am Karlsbad 24 to the Tugendhat House: Mies van der Rohe’s Quest for a New Form of Living Xiangnan Xiong, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Christopher Long The present dissertation investigates Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s domestic work in relation to his lifestyle and the contemporary discourse of modern living. In so doing, it provides a more variegated picture of Mies and demonstrates that a quest for a new form of living underlay his architectural development in the 1920s. Mies underwent a remarkable transition in architectural thought in the mid-1920s. It resulted in a new ordering in factors that shaped his architecture: he enthroned spirituality as the goal of his work and shifted his inspirational source from modern technology to modern life. At the time, Mies led a flexible and manifold life in a traditional Berlin apartment at Am Karlsbad 24, and he felt its static spatial arrangement could hardly cope with his liberated lifestyle. This experience led him to believe that modern living featured a constant adaption to the changing life circumstances, and, thus, modern dwellings should be made flexible enough to allow these adaptions. Therefore, in his apartment building for the Weissenhof housing exhibition in 1927, Mies created the device of moveable walls that enabled inhabitants to adapt the spatial layout to their changing needs and in so doing, vi affirmed a flexible lifestyle. Alongside meeting the practical demands of modern living, Mies also sought to fulfill its spiritual needs. A series of contemporary discussions on intellectual potentials of modern life led him to keep a distance from the prevalent functionalist approach and instead seek to evoke a sense of spirituality in dwellings. In the Tugendhat House in 1929, Mies, in masterfully manipulating interior reflective materials and exterior landscape view, created a contemplative ambience. In so doing, he proposed a thoroughly transformed domesticity that was centered on reflection, self-consciousness, and inward-looking. In demonstrating Mies’s architectural development as one that strove to affirm an emerging lifestyle and then elevate it onto a spiritual plateau, this study brings out a new, cultural value that constituted the heart of Mies’s work. vii Table of Contents List of Figures ..........................................................................................................x Introduction ............................................................................................................1 A Brief Literature Review ..............................................................................9 Chapter One Mies van der Rohe’s Writings in the 1920s: A Transitional Moment ............12 Mies’s Writing ..............................................................................................13 Mies’s Transition from 1924 to 1926 ...........................................................20 Life as Driving Force for Architecture .........................................................26 Technology as Means not as an End .............................................................43 Chapter Two Mies’s Life in Am Karlsbad 24: An Inspiration ...............................................56 Berlin in the 1920s ........................................................................................56 The Potsdamer Platz ............................................................................61 Am Karlsbad 24 ............................................................................................66 Mies’s life in the Apartment ................................................................74 The Importance of Spatial Flexibility ...........................................................83 Chapter Three The Weissenhof Apartment Building: Affirmation of a Modern Living ........93 Mies’s statement for the Werkbund Exhibition “Die Wohnung” .................93 Mies’s Position in“Rationalization and Standardization” ....................99 To Reform life through Building Art .................................................100 Mies’s Apartment Building at the Weissenhofsiedlung .............................109 Flexible Living: Adaptable Space ......................................................115 Flexible Living: Movable Furniture...................................................123 A Collective Tendency towards Flexible Living ........................................128 viii Chapter Four The Tugendhat House: Seeking Spirituality in Architecture ........................145 Towards a Spirituality in Architecture ........................................................145 The problem of Minimal Housing and Neue Sachlichkeit ................145 A Focus on Spirituality ......................................................................155 The Tugendhat House: An Elevated Art of Life .........................................166 The Importance of Consciousness .....................................................166 A Trip to the Tugendhat House .........................................................171 Spirituality vs. Livability: Is the Tugendhat House Habitable? .........189 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................201 Figures..................................................................................................................209 Bibliography ........................................................................................................247 Mies’s writings, lectures, and interviews ....................................................247 German Period (1920-1938) ..............................................................247 American Period (1938-1969) ...........................................................250 Achieves ......................................................................................................252 Periodicals ...................................................................................................253 Books and Articles ......................................................................................253 ix List of Figures Figure 1.1. Diagram showing the intellectual influences on Mies’s transition. ..209 Figure 1.2. The Brick Country House project, 1924.. .........................................210 Figure 1.3. V. Huszar, Mechanical dancing figure (Mechanisch Dansende Figuur), Voorburg (Holland), 1920.. ............................................................211