Finding the Context in Mies

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the term “context” has lost theoretical currency in architectural culture, despite the persistence of its ideas in regulation, teaching and practice. Today, alternatives such as situation, circumstances, contingencies, the setting, surroundings and environment are more popular, and serve to distinguish those who employ them from the outmoded “context” or “contextualism”.

In thinking of examples of prominent contextualist architecture from the twentieth century, works by Frank Lloyd Wright or Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's buildings are not widely regarded as part of the canon. Despite some obvious resistance, beginning in the 1980s, Mies' buildings were increasingly associated with “context”, a term which became essential to the description of Mies' particular brand of urbanism. This article returns to the post-war period, the eclipse of modernism and Mies' evolving reception. On the one hand, this return provides an overview of the various interpretations of Mies' architecture and the patterns which have emerged in the revisionary thought concerning Mies. On the other hand, it provides an opportunity to examine the margins of context discourse, promising to reveal more about the value and logic of context than the study of those architects whose work has previously been held as the mainstream of contextualist debate.

In discussing Mies and the concept of context, the major question asked by this article is not whether Mies was a contextualist, but rather, how did Mies' work come to be interpreted in these terms, and more importantly, why?

Notes

^1. This material was first presented at a colloquium at the TU Berlin in July 2002 and then as a conference paper at the University of Queensland in May 2003.

^2. The quote comes from the essay “Bigness, or the Problem of Large” in Rem Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1995), 495–516.

^3. See Charles Jencks, “Contextual Counterpoint,” Architectural Design 81, no. 5 (2011): 62–67; and “Contextual Counterpoint in Architecture,” Log 24 (2012): 71–80.

^4. Jencks, “Contextual Counterpoint,” 62.

^5. Jencks, “Contextual Counterpoint,” 72.

^6. For Atelier Bow-Wow's fine-grained analyses of the minutiae of urban existence, see Momoyo Kaijima, Junzo Kuroda and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Made in Tokyo (Tokyo: Kajima Shuppankai, 2001); Tokyo Institute of Technology Tsukamoto Architectural Laboratory and Atelier Bow-Wow, Pet Architecture Guidebook (Tokyo: World Photo Press, 2002), vol. 2; and Atelier Bow-Wow, Bow-Wow from Post Bubble City (Tokyo: Inax Publishing, 2006). For a sample of SANAA's use of and references to context, see the project descriptions and the essay by Mohsen Mostafavi in “Inorganic Architecture,” El Croquis 155 (2011): 244–51.

^7. Mohsen Mostafavi compares SANAA's minimalism to that of Mies' “almost nothing” approach. Mostafavi, “Inorganic Architecture,” 249.

^8. Rem Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” in Phyllis Lambert and Werner Oechslin, eds., Mies in America (New York: H. N. Abrams, 2001), 716–43.

^9. This new building is the McCormick Tribune Campus Center. IIT's campus and buildings were among the first of Mies' commissions after emigrating to the United States, and occupied Mies' practice from 1939 to 1958.

^10. Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” 722, 721.

^11. Mark Jarzombek, “Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery and the Problem of Context,” Assemblage 2 (February 1987): 32–43.

^13. Jarzombek, “Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery,” 39–40

^12. Jarzombek, “Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery,” 36.

^14. Jarzombek, “Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery,” 43.

^15. For a selection of contextualist literature, see Thomas Schumacher, “Contextualism: Urban Ideals and Deformations,” Casabella 359/360 (1971): 79–86; Stuart Cohen, “Physical Context/Cultural Context: Including It All,” Oppositions 2 (1974): 1–39; Grahame Shane, “Contextualism,” Architectural Design (1976): 676–79; and Steven Hurtt, “Conjectures on Urban Form: The Cornell Urban Design Studio 1963–1982,” Cornell Journal of Architecture 2 (1983): 54–78. For an early use of the term “context”, see Robert Venturi's Masters thesis of 1950, reproduced in Robert Venturi, Iconography and Electronics Upon a Generic Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

^16. William Ellis tells us it was Rowe's student at Cornell, Stuart Cohen, who referred to “contexturalism”. See William Ellis, “Type and Context in Urbanism: Colin Rowe's Contextualism,” Oppositions 18 (1979): 27n5.

^17. Kate Nesbitt's architectural theory reader, Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, proposes contextualism as one of the mainlines of architectural theory in the latter third of the twentieth century. See Chapter 6, “Urban Theory after Modernism: Contexutalism, Main Street and Beyond,” in Kate Nesbitt, ed., Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965–1995 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 266–337.

^18. Nan Ellin puts a similar emphasis on contextualism, in particular the “Anglo-American Axis” of Rowe, Venturi and others, in her analysis of postmodern urbanism, see Nan Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999 [1996]), 74–80.

^19. See, for example, Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978); and Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966).

^20. See Anthony Vidler, “The Third Typology,” Oppositions 7 (Winter 1976/1977): 1–4.

^21. For examples of this return to “the city” and its pairing with questions of typology in architecture and urban design, see Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982); and Rob Krier, Urban Space (London: Academy Editions, 1979).

^22. See, for example, Colin Rowe's essays, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier Compared,” Architectural Review 101, no. 603 (1947): 101–104; and “Mannerism and Modern Architecture,” Architectural Review 107, no. 641 (1950): 289–99.

^23. Rossi, The Architecture of the City.

^24. Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction.

^25. For a discussion of the Townscape movement and its relationship with Rowe, see Mathew Aitchison, “Who's Afraid of Ivor De Wolfe,” AA Files 62 (2011): 34–39. For a translation and analysis of Sitte's book, see George R. Collins and Christiane Crasemann Collins, Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning, with a Translation of the 1889 Austrian Edition of His City Planning According to Artistic Principles (New York: Rizzoli, 1986).

^26. Colin Rowe, “Connell, Ward and Lucas [Letter to the Editor],” Architectural Association Journal 73, no. 808 (1957): 163.

^27. Reyner Banham, “Revenge of the Picturesque: English Architectural Polemics, 1945–1965,” in John Summerson, ed., Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing Presented to Nikolaus Pevsner (London: Allen Lane, 1968), 265–73.

^28. Peter Reyner Banham, “De Wolfe the Author?” letter to the Editor, Architectural Review 158, no. 945 (1975): 322; and Peter Reyner Banham, “Guess Whose Utopia,” review of Collage City by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Architectural Review 167, no. 997 (1980): 192.

^29. These are not Ellis' terms but are derived from his analysis. Ellis, “Type and Context,” 4–7.

^30. Rowe and Koetter, Collage City, 106.

^31. Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989 [1981]), 72–73, 110.

^32. See Peter Carter, “Mies van der Rohe: An Appreciation on the Occasion, this Month, of his 75th Birthday,” Architectural Design 31 (1961): 95–121; and Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson, “Mies van der Rohe,” Architectural Design, no. 7 (1969): 363–66.

^33. Jarzombek, “Mies Van Der Rohe's New National Gallery,” 32–43.

^36. Koolhaas, “A Foundation of Amnesia,” 6.

^34. See Rem Koolhaas, “A Foundation of Amnesia,” Design Quarterly 125 (1984): 5–11. See also Koolhaas' explanation of his Friedrichstadt competition, based on Mies' location of a triangular entrance gate to Berlin, in sympathy with the other geometrical city gates (octagon, square and circle). Patrice Goulet and N. Kuhnert, “Die Erschreckende Schönheit Des 20. Jahrhunderts: Rem Koolhaas Im Gespräch mit Patrice Goulet, N. Kuhnert,” Arch Plus 86 (1986): 36.

^35. Koolhaas, “A Foundation of Amnesia,” 5.

^37. Fritz Neumeyer, “Space for Reflection: Block Versus Pavilion,” in Franz Schulze, ed., Mies van der Rohe: Critical Essays (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989), 148–71. Pagination for the two quotations is pages 169 and 160 respectively.

^38. Franz Schulze, Mies van der Rohe: Critical Essays (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989), 175–76.

^39. Here the author is following the earlier work of John Macarthur, “Seven Doubts About Urbanism,” Transition: Discourse on Architecture 34 (1991): 82–94; and “Urbanist Rhetoric: Problems and Origins in Architectural Theory,” Architecture Research Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1996): 8–13.

^40. For a broader study of the history of context, see Peter Burke, “Context in Context,” Common Knowledge 8, no. 1 (2002): 152–77.

^41. The quotation continues: “We are in a position to briefly summarize this phenomenon since many architects have made the way in which they profess themselves to be contextual quite clear: either in the tradition of [Ernesto] Rogers' theory of environmental preexistences … or in the version of a more or less critical regionalism; or again in the sense of a Postmodern presence of the past; or in the acceptation of a theory of modification; or in the tendency to base the project on the relationship between old and new; or in the relativization of the ‘strong’ language of the modern movement; or in the varying of a unique architectural substance by means of different ‘accidents’; or in the interaction between place and model; or in the situationism of those who are ready to listen to the many voices of the place; or in the aforementioned deconstructive attitude.” Pierluigi Nicolin, “Contextualism?,” Lotus International 74 (1992): 109.

^42. Hans Ibelings, Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 1998).

^44. Harrison and Woods, Art in Theory, 799.

^43. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, eds., Art in Theory: 1900–1990, an Anthology of Changing Ideas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 798–99.

^45. See Rosalind Krauss, “The Grid, the /Cloud/, and the Detail,” in Detlef Mertins, ed., The Presence of Mies (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 133–47. This account was based on Krauss' earlier analyses, Passages in Modern Sculpture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); and The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).

^46. Yve-Alain Bois, “A Picturesque Stroll around Clara-Clara,” in Hal Foster and Gordon Hughes, eds., Richard Serra (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 58–96; and Douglas Crimp, “Redefining Site Specificity,” in Hal Foster and Gordon Hughes, eds., Richard Serra (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 146–73.

^47. See Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt, The Writings of Robert Smithson: Essays with Illustrations (New York: New York University Press, 1979). See also Mark Linder, “Sitely Windows: Robert Smithson's Architectural Criticism,” Assemblage, no. 39 (1999): 6–35.

^49. Krauss, “The Grid, the /Cloud/, and the Detail,” 133.

^48. The first English translation of Merleau-Ponty's book, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Humanities Press, 1962).

^50. Caroline Constant, “The Barcelona Pavilion as Landscape Garden: Modernity and the Picturesque,” AA Files 20 (1990): 46–54.

^51. Robin Evans, “Mies Van Der Rohe's Paradoxical Symmetries,” AA Files 19 (1990): 56–68.

^52. Mertins, The Presence of Mies.

^53. Lambert and Oechslin, Mies in America; and Barry Bergdoll, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Terence Riley, Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002).

^54. A detailed discussion of the voluminous scholarship on Mies exceeds the scope of the present essay, but two articles of particular relevance to the “urbanist-minimalist-Mies” might include Detlef Mertins, “New Mies,” in Detlef Mertins, ed., The Presence of Mies (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 23–28; and Sarah Whiting, “Bas-Relief Urbanism: Chicago's Figured Field,” in Lambert and Oechslin, Mies in America, 640–91. For a more recent return to commentary on Mies and the significance of the Seagram Building in New York, see Felicity Scott, “An Army of Soldiers or a Meadow: The Seagram Building and the ‘Art of Modern Architecture’,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70, no. 3 (2011): 330–53.

^55. K. Michael Hays, “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” Perspecta 21 (1984): 20. See Note 7 for his citation of Krauss. Hays' position is reiterated in Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 189–90.

^58. Hays, “The Mies Effect,” 696.

^56. Hays continues, “Mies's glass curtain wall, alternatively transparent, reflective, or refractive – depending on light conditions and viewing positions – absorbs, mirrors, or distorts the immediate, constantly changing images of the city life. The very body of the building contorts to assume the form demanded by the contingent configuration of the site and to register the circumstantial images of the context. But countering expression's subjectifying tendencies, the reiterative steel structure mimics the anonymous repetition of the assembly line and poses mechanization as another sort of contextual determinant.” K. Michael Hays, “Odysseus and the Oarsmen, or, Mies's Abstraction Once Again,” in Detlef Mertins, ed., The Presence of Mies (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 235–36.

^57. K. Michael Hays, “The Mies Effect,” in Lambert and Oechslin, Mies in America, 694.

^60. Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” 722.

^61. Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” 723.

^62. Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” 721.

^59. This writing starts in 1984 with “A Foundation of Amnesia” and concludes with “Miestakes” in 2001.

^63. See Rem Koolhaas, “A Foundation of Amnesia;” Goulet et. al., “Die Erschreckende Schönheit;” and a lecture originally delivered in 1990 and published as Rem Koolhaas, “How Modern Is Dutch Architecture?” in Crimson, Michael Speaks and Gerald Hadders, eds., Mart Stam's Trousers (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1999), 158–67.

^65. Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” 720.

^68. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL, 1260.

^69. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL, 495–516.

^64. See, Peter Smithson and Wouter Vanstiphout, “Mart Stam's Trousers: A Conversation between Peter Smithson and Wouter Vanstiphout,” in Crimson, Speaks and Hadders, Mart Stam's Trousers, 136.

^66. Smithson, “Mart Stam's Trousers,” 135–36.

^67. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL.

^71. Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” 725.

^70. Full quote: “Our intention could be synthesized in how to turn all that garbage of the present system to our advantage. A kind of democratic King Midas: try to find the concept through which the worthless turns into something, where even the sublime is not unthinkable.” Interview with Rem Koolhaas, El Croquis 53 (1993): 19.

^72. Famously, these were problems taken up within architectural culture by Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown and Steven Izenour, along with Charles Moore, or the work of SITE from the 1970s and 1980s.

^73. Krauss goes on to talk about Mies' purported “classicism” and his “formalism”. See Krauss, “The Grid, the /Cloud/, and the Detail,” 133.

^74. Peter Carter and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Mies van der Rohe at Work (London: Phaidon, 1999), 181.

^75. The quotation continues: “On the Seagram building, since it was to be built in New York and since it was to be the first major office building which I was to build, I asked for two types of advice for the development of the plans. One, the best real estate advice as to the types of desirable rentable space and, two, professional advice regarding the New York Building Code. With my direction established and with these advisers, it was then only a matter of hard work.” Carter, Mies van der Rohe at Work, 61–62.

^78. Carter, “Mies Van Der Rohe,” 104.

^79. Kuh, The Open Eye, 38.

^76. This quotation was reported by Phylis Lambert. Unfortunately I am no longer able to locate its source.

^77. Katherine Kuh, The Open Eye: In Pursuit of Art (New York: Harper and Row, 1971): 35.

^80. Koolhaas, “Miestakes,” 734.