"Less is More". Kiss my balls. Mies van der Rohe invented this philosophy to avoid doing work. That said, I don't hate with the same intensity as Le Corbusier. That man actually ruined lives and societites with his work. He had complete contempt for people.
Some of Mies stuff is good as sculpture eg- the Barcelona Pavillion & Farnsworth House. Totally impractical to live in, but nice to look at! His bigger stuff is rather ordinary though.
His housing work, esp. the mass scale stuff, may have been a bit left of the middle, but surely you can see the genius of the man, and the fact his work was so far ahead of his time, that some of his smaller housing work still looks good today? The main reason I like him is his religious architecture, which has to have some of the best form, spaces, natural lighting and sculptural shape of any churches I've ever seen today. Notre Dame Du Haut at Ronchamp, La Tourette and the now complete church at Firminy are all spectacular. Have ever of you two actually walked through and spent hours or lived in any of his works? It might change your mind.
That's terrible even as a joke. Ronchamp is a great building. The Villa Savoy for it's time was great, Chandigargh, the Unite the Habitacion are all horrible and should be bulldozed immediately as urban blight and fascist architecture of the highest order.
That douchebag Le Corbousier City for 3 Million Boy, I'm glad this never happened. There was a plan for "sinking" 34th and 125th streets in Manhattan based on this idea which thankfully died. Unfortunately, it is dicks like this guy that give planning a bad name. Thankfully our modern version of New Urbanism does not have the same contempt for individuality and existing neighborhoods. It's more about intergration than wholesale restructuring.
Re: That douchebag Le Corbousier Yeah, it's so much improved since it only has contempt for people who can't afford to live in it's wholly restructured areas.
Re: That douchebag Le Corbousier Depends. An overwhelming majority of projects in Jersey City right now require a significant portion of the residential areas be set aside for middle and low income families.
Re: That douchebag Le Corbousier That's very nice and all, however, if you don't have the income to pay for the higher cost of say, food, goods and services in the new mixed used developments, then it really doesn't matter what the rent is because you can't afford to shop locally, you can't afford a car, and you don't have the means to carry a weeks worth of groceries in from Wal-Mart or any other discount retailer.
Re: That douchebag Le Corbousier That would be true if there weren't 3 or 4 different levels of shopping in the same neighborhood. We have 99 cent stores and high end boutiques and every thing inbetween within a 15 minute walk of most points in the city. And every place delivers, from Target to the A&P and usually for free so the car and grocery thing is not an issue. Trust me. It's working.
Re: That douchebag Le Corbousier How many 99 cent stores sell food or clothing? As long as you are able to be at home when the deliver or you have a credit card to charge it. Until the next "rebranding" of "good planning" comes along.
I can translate that *sigh* for you: "I am an architect so therefore I know more than you. And because I know more than you, I can tell you that any building ever built in Chicago (or by an architect that designed a building in Chicago) is infinately more beautiful than anything ever built anywhere else. And while it may look empty, cold, and ugly to you - the dirty people - to me - an architect - it is actually a stroke of genius. You see, my opinion matters more than yours because I am an architect - in Chicago. And since Mies will be forever tied to Chicago architecture, he is by definition, the greatest architect/designer in the history of ever and ever amen. Thank you."
Re: That douchebag Le Corbousier Most of them by me. But I said from 99 cent stores to botiques. That leaves room for Target, BJ's, A&P, Pathmark, C-Town, the corner grocery lady, etc. There is supply for all ranges of the income scale Or you put your groceries in one of these. They work like a charm. Well so far it is successful. I'm not sure of what else to say.
Yeah, that's it. You're all entitled to your opinion but the magnitude by which the core point is being missed is pretty depressing. I'm not going to get into it in depth here though, there's not much upside to it and I just got done writing quite a bit on a similar topic. Carry on.
Well I'm 17 and have been studying art theory like its going out of fashion. I love the architecture section and got 100% for that part of the exam so I'm glad I can put my knowledge to use now... Well I quite like Mies's design's, especially the German Pavillion which focusses on using luxury materials like stainless steel pilotis, but I'm not to keen on the Seagrum building. If any1 I don't like Le Corbussier and his Voisson plan...he just seemed like an anti-social and people hating person whose designs reflected those qualities. Are there any recommended architecture forums btw? I'm basically going to end up studying architecture after school so I'd like to get some more background.
Just to let everyone in this thread know... there's an article on the Seagram Building in the current issue of Mental_floss magazine. I haven't read it yet, but the articles are usually pretty good.
Try this one- its got people from all over the world, including quite a few South Africans. http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums You want to get into architecture!!! Sucker!!
chandigarh i've never been to but the unité d'habitation (la maison du fada for the marseillais) is brilliant in all respects. one of the paradoxes of this and many other such buildings is that although they were conceived as low income housing they have ended up so sought after that only bobos (bourgeois bohemians) live in them now. curiously, the only really innovative or interesting housing these days (at least here in lyon) is public; the private developers take less than zero risks and only offer the blandest blahest buildings imaginable. the paradox is double, because there IS an upscale market for imagination, whereas many residents of the interesting projects are offput by that very imagination. luckily this will change in our city since there is a huge area right in the center of town that has been opened up to become what... hmmm, maybe i'd better take this to the town planning section, after all we're talking about MVDR here ... and i've got a big problem with mies. lakeshore, seagrams, barcelona, yes, all very pretty. but the construction techniques and materials all very, very expensive, wasteful and at bottom, precious and artificial. take the lakeshore drive apts. the idea is to show that a metal framework can be decorative as well as useful... but that metal framework had to be imbedded in a concrete shell for fire resistance... which mies then recladded with useless and very expensive metal (aluminum i believe) which was for good measure a bitch to install.
Not only did he design ************ buildings but he put them in stuoid places. CHICAGO — Rowing a boat isn't in Barbara Campagna's job description. Nevertheless, the architecture director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and three colleagues found themselves paddling to the Farnsworth House in Plano, built by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1951. There, they piled furniture into their borrowed rowboat as rising floodwaters threatened to invade in the aftermath of torrential storms. "We've been calling it 'Lake Farnsworth' all day because (the house) is floating on the water," Campagna said late Friday of the glass-walled house, which rests on four-foot stilts. " ... Every piece is worth tens of thousands of dollars. They're all replaceable, but very expensive."