From my last lecture on the modernism, we were focusing mainly on one of four great “European functionalists” named “ Mies van der Rohe. ( as Hitchcock and Johnson called him; “The International Style” writers) In this chapter, they tried to distinguished between two words “ Architecture” and “Building”, and these four great European were consider by Hitchcock and Johnson that they were creating what is called an “architecture”. In contrast , in America , architects who thought they were involve with modern and being functional were just engaged only to a word “building”.
“ The skyscrapers were empty compositions tarted up with “ zigzag trimmings”
If we were to look at the early design of the skyscraper of American architecture ,which we would say that it is a “ bad design”. According to the preface to the book “ The international Style” , the writers point out to the most famous NY skyscraper design the “ Chrysler Building”. He made comments thatit is a stainless-steel gargoyles with little Christmas-tree ornaments on top. Moreover, they also added they also heard he architects were arguing about the function of the ugly ornaments and hollow grandiosity were “ functional”. From that , they made another sarcastic comments about this skyscraper that the only function it does is to “please” the clients. The person who should blame forthis is “client”. To be engaged with the style of modernism, clients were not play the roles of the decision of how the building looks like , the only job that they do in this case is “ paying”.
For this response , I would like to compare the design of skyscraper of the American architecture with building by European architects : “Mies van der Rohe”.In 1919, G magazine proposed new standard of “ architecture”. The cover of the magazine was images of heavy building on the right and the new design of skyscrapers of Mies 'style on the right”.Mies most famous concept is “ less is more”. He added that he was to combine the usual worker-housing elements in an elegant way while maintain the concept of “minimalism”.
In 1958, the “Seagram building” designed by Mies was rised up on the Park Avenue street. This building designed was the proposal by the firm manufactured rye whiskey. It is a worker housing based on “ non-bourgeois” word. It is a 38-stories high of entirely glasses that has tinted brownish amber to emphasize the color to the whiskey bottle. The steel structure were propose to be “ broze” as it mean to have a coherent color to the glasses. The building composed of only steel beams and glass with concreted slabs creating floors and ceiling. Furthermore , due to the requirement that the steel must encased in concrete or fire protecting material, then Mies end up with enclosing the steel members in concrete and express them by sticking vertical wide-flange beam outside the concrete.
In my opinion, we can definitely say that this can be called as “ architecture” not just “ building”.From the book as it said “ heart of the function was not function but the spiritual quality known as non-bourgeois”. The elements that compose the building are what make it non bourgeois such as the color glass which came from machine manufactured , bronze that use instead of steel reveal the true color of it, and the pure structural without the decorative element : steel beams, glasses , concrete. Lastly,the wide -flage beam that doesn't function in term of physical ,but in term of spiritual reveal the term of being “ worker” or “non bourgeois”
In conclusion, Mie using the concept of “minimalist” as we can see from the pure structural of the buidling witout any additional decoration; the material that plays a role of decoration in itself (colors).These compositions are what make the building become “ architecture”
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