Readings: Mies van der Rohe by William Jr. Curtis via Architectural Review

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“WAS THERE ANY OTHER MODERN ARCHITECT WITH SUCH A SENSE OF RESTRAINED LUXURY AS MIES?”

Mies van der Rohe is one of those architects who refuses to go away. In the great wave against Modernism 30 years ago he was blamed for every banal glass box around the world. Everyone can remember the jingles of course: ‘Less is more’ and the retort ‘Less is a bore’. ‘Postmodern classicism’ had its revenge in the form of decorated skyscrapers with clumsy cut-out caricatures of keystones and pilasters, but it became obvious that Mies had more of the truly classical in him at the level of idea, proportion and detail. Just when he seemed buried he re-emerged, seen through the lens of a younger generation interested in minimalism and materiality.

Perhaps it is always like this when founding fathers are re-examined: first one, then another, aspect of their work is focused on by both champions and detractors. Even during the 1920s, it was hard to tie Mies down. On the one side, there were those German architects who espoused a ‘new objectivity’, a cold factuality, which despite Mies’s own rhetoric never accounted for his own work, with its lurking metaphysical dimension.

via: http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reputations-mies-van-der-rohe/8622955.article