Product Description

This in-depth look at Mies van der Rohe's early career is the first to examine the architect's work in Europe in terms of specific historical and cultural context, rather than the more abstract and formal arguments of the International Style. While earlier studies have described a fundamental break between Mies's neo-classical work prior to 1919 and the more avant-garde work of the 1920s, recent research demonstrates that the transformation was much more gradual. Here 11 scholars and architectural historians explore particular aspects of Mies's work, together shedding new light on the continual interplay of tradition and innovation, nature and abstraction, in the evolution of his design theories and methods. With a wealth of photographs and drawings, many not previously published, this book conveys for the first time the dynamic intellectual ferment of this formative period in the life of one of architecture's towering figures. Published to accompany a groundbreaking 2001 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Essays by Barry Bergdoll, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Detlef Mertins, Wolf Tegethoff, Fritz Neumeyer, Jan Maruhn, Andres Lepik, Wallis Miller, Rosemarie Haag Bletter and Jean-Louis Cohen and Terence Riley.
Introduction by Terence Riley.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1747379 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-15
• Released on: 2002-07-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 392 pages

From Publishers Weekly
One of the century's major architects receives a thorough, beautiful and masterfully documented treatment in this pair of massive books prompted by a pair of linked New York exhibits, at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, which run through September. After adding the magisterial "van der Rohe" of his maternal grandfather to his name, Ludwig Mies (1886-1969) built up an impressive record of angular houses and advanced theories in Germany before he fled to America in 1938. Once here, he perfected the spacious, modernist, glass-and-steel structures that brought fame to his International Style among them New York's Seagram Building and Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology a style also championed and promulgated by the young Phillip Johnson. MoMA's first Mies show, in 1947, cast him as a hero of abstracts and absolutes. The new volume on his Berlin years, by contrast, aims to humanize the architect and to show him responding to his times. Here are dozens of blueprints and drawings some never built along with photographs of his early houses (some predating WWI). Here, too, are essays from nine scholars and critics about his urban theory, about Berlin's early skyscrapers and about Mies's relations with dada, the movies, Prussia and philosophy. The attractive book on his American work may have slightly broader appeal: essays and photo spreads here focus on Mies's U.S. colleagues and collaborations, and on his interactions with Chicago; 10 essayists contribute, among them Rem Koolhaas (S, M, L, XL), who plans an addition to Mies's IIT. The Berlin volume boasts 200 full-color, 150 duotone and 166 b&w images; its American companion offers 141 color and 499 b&w. (Sept.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in 1886 in Germany; he died in the United States in 1969. One of the pioneers of modern architecture and the International Style, he started out as an assistant to Peter Behrens. A former director of the Bauhaus, some of his most important buildings include the 1929 German Pavilion for the Barcelona International Exhibition and the 1956-58 Seagram Building in New York.

Customer Reviews

A Fine Book for a Great Architect
Mies emmigrated to the United States in 1938. He was fifty two years old and had been an architect for over thirty years. Who could have known that his best and most productive years were still ahead of him. "Mies in Berlin" is a look back at the first three decades of his career. It is fascinating to see Mies' work in the years before the Great War. He was a conventional architect working in a very conservative style. Starting in 1920, Mies' surprising creativity and original vision burst forth. Along Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, he was one of the father's of modernism and what became known as the "International Style".

This volume is produced by the Museum of Modern Art and it is one of the finest art books that I have ever seen. It seems as though no expense was spared in producing this volume. There are images of Mies' early work that you will never see in any other volume. It is such a beautifully produced book that it is better to spend the money and purchase the hardback edition. Highly recommended.

modern history
A thorough analysisof the early career of Mies. Places him in a historical context which should be refreshing to anyone interested in the history of the modern movement in architecture.