Word: rohe
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Illinois Institute of Technology's Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 72, architect of stark, skeletal glass and steel skyscrapers. Widely reckoned to be one of this century's three most influential architects (with Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier), German-born Mies was trained as a stonemason. He headed Germany's revolutionary Bauhaus group of artists and architects from 1930 until Nazi pressure forced him to close it in 1933, migrated to the U.S. in 1938. Popular renown came, along with occasional harsh words from Wright and other critics, with Mies's design of Illinois Tech...
...lobby of H. J. Heinz Co.'s new $4,500,000 Research Center in Pittsburgh. From the start,recalls Gordon Bunshaft, design partner of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the lobby was planned for a specific kind of painting: "Brick going in on two sides, Mies van der Rohe chairs in black, a white wall with a bright, vertical mural...
...Maria." The reaction to Stone's design for New Delhi was a rousing cheer that rolled the full range of the architectural profession, from Mies van der Rohe purists to Frank Lloyd Wright ("The only embassy that does credit to the United States"). Said one U.S. architect, just back from India: "The effect is of the Parthenon, with the pierced marble screen of Delhi's Red Fort and the white of the Taj Mahal. In the sun it's going to tell a terrific story." Cracked Frank Lloyd Wright: "Why not call it Taj Maria...
Accent of Emptiness. Mies van der Rohe believes that "structure is spiritual"; his aim is to express the skyscraper's essential steel cage as dramatically as possible and with a maximum of economy. In the Seagram building, he did this with deceptive simplicity. To avoid the stairstep building plan that Manhattan architects have overused to meet zoning requirements (the tower must be only 25% of the site area), Mies sacrificed valuable Park Avenue frontage, threw open a wide plaza. This gave him an opportunity to create an accent of emptiness, at the same time gave his building a dramatic...
When Seagram's moved into the first nine floors of its house last December (the rest of the building, now 90% rented, will be ready in May, the large ground-floor restaurant in August), Mies van der Rohe proudly announced: "This is my strongest work." Says Architect Scout Phyllis Lambert: "You feel its force and restfulness as you enter. From the framing of the windows to the total building, love has gone into it-love for every detail...