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Friday, December 16, 2005
Bobbing for Mies - Robert Venturi at IIT
Robert Venturi comes to modernist shrine Crown Hall on the IIT campus to out Mies van der Rohe as a closet symbolist and to attempt to define the architecture of our time. Read all about it here.
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
It's a sad day when average [in my opinion] architects need to align/associate themselves with the protagonists, in order to gain our attention.
A humanist of purist conviction would not insult the eye or mind like Venturi has on so many occasions.
For such a brilliant theoretician, it suprises me that Venturi seems to miss the whole point of Mies's "architecture for the era". Perhaps it is Mies' own fault for being so cryptic and reticent to talk about the meaning of his mature work. But who can blame him, as a German in America just before and during the war. Anything he could say might be misinterpreted as being communist or fascist. But the metaphorical meaning of his work, expressive his view of modern civilization, based on Oswald Spengler's, is not at all intended to be an expression of industry as Venturi claims. His buildings merely use industrial materials as appropriate to his message about the individual in the modern world. Mies' work is as symbolic as any architecture can be. He was just very reticent about using words, hoping the building could speak for itself. Once you hear it, you know that less is indeed more.
3 comments:
It's a sad day when average [in my opinion] architects need to align/associate themselves with the protagonists, in order to gain our attention.
A humanist of purist conviction would not insult the eye or mind like Venturi has on so many occasions.
I say "More is a Bore!"
For such a brilliant theoretician, it suprises me that Venturi seems to miss the whole point of Mies's "architecture for the era". Perhaps it is Mies' own fault for being so cryptic and reticent to talk about the meaning of his mature work. But who can blame him, as a German in America just before and during the war. Anything he could say might be misinterpreted as being communist or fascist. But the metaphorical meaning of his work, expressive his view of modern civilization, based on Oswald Spengler's, is not at all intended to be an expression of industry as Venturi claims. His buildings merely use industrial materials as appropriate to his message about the individual in the modern world. Mies' work is as symbolic as any architecture can be. He was just very reticent about using words, hoping the building could speak for itself. Once you hear it, you know that less is indeed more.
But that's precisely it...Venturi has always been a brilliant theoretician
and a completely mediocre architect.
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