Architecture and Faux-nationalism: reflections on a remark made by the British architectural historian Gavin Stamp about the German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

ABSTRACT

This is a short ‘think-piece’, it was prompted by my visit to the RIBA exhibition Mies van der Rohe & James Stirling: Circling the Square, where I came across a letter, dated 1985, from the architectural historian Gavin Stamp to Margaret Thatcher. Stamp was concerned about an architectural proposal for a site in the City of London by the Avant-garde, modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. As a long-term observer of the British reception of Mies, the contents and circumstances of the letter got me thinking.

KEYWORDS:

• Mies and der Rohe
• Gavin Stamp
• Mansion House Square
• The City of London

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Victoria Watson is the director of Doctor Watson Architects and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster. From 2012 to 2018, she taught an experimental design unit on the MA Architecture degree at the Royal College of Art. She has contributed articles about the history and theory of architecture to a variety of journals and magazines and published a number of books. Her architectonic models, which are derived from the study of avant-garde painting and building, are sometimes exhibited in London and other locations. She is currently working on the second volume of an on-going series of Incomplete Works.

Notes

1 The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation aiming to bring about economic integration among its member states. It was created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957 with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland joining in 1973. Upon the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the EEC was incorporated and renamed as the European Community (EC). In 2009 the EC's institutions were absorbed into the EU's wider framework and the community ceased to exist.

2 EUmiesaward, about the prize, https://www.miesarch.com, accessed 23 June 2019, 18:13