Yesterday I was reading in the Chicago Special
+ t an article by Rem Koolhaas on
his speech on campus Chicago ITT. Called Miestakes
and discusses the differences between those purists who favor architecture with infinite zeal to preserve the masterpieces of architecture and those, like himself Koolhaas, who think that evolution implies change, transformations, adaptations. The text, which was published in
a + t 23 , it seems advisable to reproduce and below. The original article is here
.
Problem. According to statistics, a student or their parents decide, within five minutes of your arrival, whether to apply to a university or not.
such tests, the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology Mies van der Rohe has the odd problem.
The IIT campus is a masterpiece of contemporary invisible to the eye. Mies's work goes unnoticed if not give explanations.
Sign
To turn the tide in this decline in popularity, was organized in 1997, a competition for a new Student Center.
in documents handed Zaha Hadid and Peter Eisenman , there are solutions that are displaced to the south of the geographic center of campus to direct confrontation with the Crown Hall. Mies ignore meditation on the generic and are in favor of unique architecture and heroic that would constitute a radical departure for the campus.
"The greatness of Mies is" sustainable "next masterpiece average rate of the late twentieth century? Can the company survive the typical or even five seconds?
Clean
I do not respect Mies, I love Mies.
I have studied Mies, excavated Mies, Mies reassembly. I even cleaned Mies. As
not revere Mies, I fought with fans.
1930 villas can be read, not as individual entities, but as fragments of an urban condition. Mies is Roman villas Berlin fit together in a manner so delivered their twins at Pompeii.
No one, especially in Chicago, speaks to the quality of Mies as a town planner.
is the ambiguity Wonderful IIT campus that makes the status of its substance lies between object and built fabric, which makes the modules they include potential expansion and nevertheless end up also emphatically making structures undecided swing between a first plane in a recession and a patterned background.
The IIT campus was designed in 1939 by Mies was initially built between 1942 and 1958 and "ended" by his cohorts from 1958 to 1968.
In the preliminary planning, Mies used a wall of generic buildings, linear to frame a courtyard that included two buildings Crown Hall type. The generic
was used as the setting for parts of the scenery. In the final plan, the buildings of the fund came to the fore, "treating the stage like a piece of decoration. Mies designed buildings
not independent, but a condition without any manner which could manifest as building in any location and be (re) combined in an infinite number of configurations.
Isolated
In its current state, the IIT's Mies is isolated.
IIT The true crisis is not due to carelessness and negligence on which it was submitted, but the disappearance of the city, Chicago , around him.
Its cancellation brutal campus has become a tabula rasa metaphor surrounded by a true tabula rasa, the disappearance of the city has removed the floor under the feet of Mies.
Isolated II
The Commons was intended to be an object in a context designed.
Since its construction, the strip of land that faces the Mies campus, located on the east side of State Street has become a space left and is now completely devoted to parking.
The meeting between the lone box of Mies and the fleeting passage of the train and fast "L" is as absurd as the evocation of the Earl of Lautréamont on the chance encounter between a umbrella and a sewing machine, a surreal pastiche. Without context, the Commons has become a non-event.
The Commons is lost in a no man's land, a building is empty, doubly isolated in the vast ruins of campus space.
Financing
The Commons began a lack of funding.
"(Because) the inability of the IIT to get the necessary funds for the Student Union, the companion piece to the Library and one of two public buildings on campus, the Commons appropriated many of the features included in the Student Union. "*
The original draft of Commons alluded to a "recreation center" for the IIT campus, including a dining room, a grocery store, hairdresser, laundry, and possibly an outdoor area. Selfless
the program, Mies left the design in the hands of Gene Summers, the architect in charge of the project and refused to take into account the work until Summers had proposed the creation of an enclosed mall.
* Letter to the author Phyllis Lambert
Loyalty Is it lawful to kill? Mies
needs to be protected from his defenders.
In 1986, the Barcelona Pavilion was reconstructed in color. With this revival, his aura was killed. (In the history of architecture, the building remains a stubborn black and white.)
half of the eighties coincided with the initial apotheosis of the market economy.
Is this a coincidence? Mies Has been used in the marketing of the city?
A use has gone from a tribute to the offense, on behalf of the memory and respect.
In the market economy, the shopping is what sustains the urban area. Much of the Pavilion is now a souvenir shop.
"How Mies has been treated by the world? ... The Barcelona Pavilion has been rebuilt and is now a major attraction." * * Letter
John Vinci Open, the biggest opponent to the proposed OMA oral, sent to IIT "defense" of the Commons
Solution
incorporate the fact of the Student Commons has generated context and volume. The adjustments have been necessary for this new coexistence were proportionally less compared to the abuse that the building had been subjected. In fact, connecting to our project, we were able to obtain the dollars needed to restore it. Together, the Student Center has been consolidated into a city block that could begin to restore Mies supposed dialectic between full and empty, between city and campus.
Solution II
few years after its conception apparently indifferent and neglect later, the Commons becomes the overnight into a masterpiece, just by the touch (the threat) of OMA.
Vinci: "What about those who have to live with this kind of vandalism? What will the future conservation of historic buildings?"
In the Sixties, American culture was driven by their preference for the stuffed, rather than the real thing. Instead of using the Commons in a powerful way, our critics suggest turning it into a "visitor center" to extol their dignity (in retrospect).
The ultimate solution to the Miesian: lifesaving rescue is through tourism.
Vinci: "There are features more compatible with the Commons that would not violate its architecture ... Why not consider the idea of \u200b\u200bputting the University Club and Mies Information Center in the Commons with other services that are compatible? It a wonderful place to experience the architecture of Mies. "
* Open Letter
Vinci
Lack of commitment were launched negotiations in order to "minimize" a compromise that could bring a new vitality.
Agency for the Conservation of Historic Illinois, "The treatment given to the Commons building's immediate surroundings is key to minimizing the effect of the new design on the historic building."
Miesian Each breakfast with added new ingredients for disagreement, for the decoupling.
And from Vinci: "Please tell him to Koolhaas I'm not a monster to try to destroy it .... One day I will have to meet them ... and do not want to have to hit him in the nose .
"Ask Koolhaas apart its two bays of the Commons building to the south. That does not why change their plans or increase the cost in any way. "* * Letter
the author.
Food Court" Other "are allowed the freedoms that are denied to the architect. While OMA was fighting for history, IIT specialist agreed that the foods had free rein to speculate on the reconfiguration of Mies in a contemporary food court.
His sketches were encouraged by their boldness, his energy and innocence, but were unable to be detected by the radar of the architect. Only architects are able to mess architecture.
Near
In all my visits to Chicago just learned something new about the Miesian, or rather two.
A, Mies once received a letter from Hugh Hefner asking her to do Playboy headquarters, Mies said no, for reasons which are not known. Two
. The model shop Mies had, during the fifties and sixties, an image (fully exposed) of the photographic studies of Playboy magazine, the architecture of Mies and the first generation of playmates were built close together in a voyeuristic.
is exactly that kind of proximity that we propose for the Student Center and the Commons, and is the the Miesian want to undo.
Lapidary
There may be a rule that says that dogmas are established by those who are more likely to violate them.
Mies' work had an essence of lack of form, formlessness, of nothingness, perversion and anxiety, hidden beneath a blanket of serenity.
Mies, what with never "explain" himself except in the most terse, condemned us all, especially your close-to guess his motives in a second reading. A Mies
have misinterpreted his texts (too) lightly. How far does the blame for Mies, his pronouncements, his example, his method his aura ", the very misrepresentation of his writings?
Mies performed fusion of the sublime and the generic in a new hybrid was a form of alchemy, a laboratory experiment that could never be duplicated by others, could never be verified. Mies is a science based essentially on faith.
original source Is responsible for the intelligence of their followers? Mies Could she have prevented the spread of the Fund, in the sixties and seventies, threatened to seize the essence of the original on a spate of plays?
Education can be understood as a pattern: it may be that Mies at IIT was always a little encouraging the generic and preferred to keep the sublime to himself.
Riddler
This image is a puzzle. After at least twenty-six hours of cumulative count has not revealed, despite everything, the secret of its impact.
is the only photograph of Building Research on Metals and Minerals in circulation. How Mies brought up so much control? Is there any other modern architect, insisting both on the outlook? Mies Is the (huge) set which is next door giant? What is the meaning of the car with voluptuous curves?
Auto injuries
However, Mies was not against the amendment.
In 1956, long before the debate on the Commons, Mies's office had already extended the Research Building on Metals and Minerals with a suddenness little sentimental.
Mies monitors
Meanwhile, a more precise research has found that the Commons has suffered a series of horrible changes, but there was no audible outcry from the architectural community.
From 1953 to 1999 occurred in the Commons "original" more than thirty interventions: drain pipes, installations rooms (on deck)-an endless series abuse.
The interior was completely unrecognizable. The glass had become rock wool, what had been a symmetrical pavilion is transformed by asymmetric screen at a local pizza.
What was a pristine building in their order of composition and in full volume had been drastically modified by random horizontal elements placed on the roof, air conditioning units added casually, drainage pipes ravaging symmetries.
In a way, this was the triumph of desire Miesian: everything can be or not be nothing.
The Commons survived Olympic impassively at a meeting alone, to the usurpation of the pragmatic, the stream of true life.
complete transformation was "the Mies monitors" from their acolytes. His amnesia led alterations made by others (electricians, "food experts") so that was outside the limits of consciousness meticulously preserved architecture.
According to Vinci, "To date, no architect has sought to further alter or attach anything to any other original architecture of Mies."
Disfigured Mies
When is more beautiful, defaced or restored? How destruction or reconstruction? The Commons could be read in two ways: an elegant hall, surprisingly complacent, that Mies was trying to be "common" to absorb all the blows that life throws at student-to suffer brutal feedback, with each unit as an addition to a composition always unfinished and the final random, or as an icon pathetically tormented, full of wounds, scars and degradations legible.
At first reading, the Commons becomes retroactively part of the Student Center. The hallowed scene can only reach the summit on his second attempt.
Also: Oedipus Rem by Lynn Becker
Audio:
Robert Johnson "Sweet Home Chicago"
DEUS EX MACHINA 
It's 
