Jenney's Home Insurance Building lives on - in Lego . Build Your Own Lego City at Crown Hall July 21

photographs: Bob Johnson

William Le Baron Jenney's Home Insurance Building, often referred to as the world's first true skyscraper, has been gone since it was torn down in 1931 for the Field Building.

 Last weekend, however, it lived on in this Lego replica, created by Gordan Grguric,  Ph.D, who can seen to the right in this photo with our indefatigable correspondent Bob Johnson, who sent us these pictures from his visit to this year's Brickworld event held last weekend at the Westin Chicago North Shore in Wheeling, a gathering were Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOLs) come together to run amok creating structures with the popular toy.

This is in way of reminder that another Legomaniac event is coming up.  On July 21st, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Crown Hall on the IIT campus, the Mies van der Rohe Society will again be sponsoring Build Your Own Lego City.  Last year's event is depicted in the photo above.

Build a masterpiece within a masterpiece. Pint-sized architects and their helpers are invited to build a city of LEGO creations within Mies' masterpiece, S. R. Crown Hall. We'll provide the bricks, and the rest is up to you.

It's free, but registration is required.  More information and registration here.

And, from 2007, check out what a bunch of Asian Architectures did with Legos in my article, Toy Futures: Building Asia Brick by Brick.

That Mies - He's So Colorful!

Crown Hall meets Unité d'Habitation.  Google Australia gets the jump on Mies van der Rohe's 126th birthday, Tuesday, March 27th, and gives the master a chance to see how a little color might have spiced things up.  (thanks to Edward Lifson for the heads up.)

("Mies, Mies, Mies," says the real estate agent as she walks through Crown Hall.  "You know we all adore you, but let's face facts, this is grim.  Grim! I went to a funeral and there were more giggles.  Black - don't get me wrong - always in fashion, always tres elegante.  But less is more, if you know what I mean - where have I heard that before?  Well, of course, you told me.  And who could argue?  But just between us, is there anything you can't add improve with that extra bit of pop! - a pinch of orchid here, a dash of coral there, and maybe a little splash of Marimekko to give all that banker's charcoal the warm and fuzzies?")

And, of course, Tuesday night at Crown Hall,  the Mies van der Rohe Society is throwing its usual birthday bash, for which registration is now closed.

If you forgot to get your tickets or can't get in, there's always our Mies van der Rohe Architect's Page, with links to articles, books, videos and photographs on the work and legacy of the pride of Aachen.

Mies on LSD (a rare trip), John Vinci on Hyde Park, plus Hump Hair Pin and yet another Bertrand Goldberg exhibition - still more for September

So we just put up the September Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events and we're already adding items.  On Tuesday, the 13th, John Vinci will discuss the transformation of a cable car waiting room into the home of the Hyde Park Historical Society, while, on Tuesday, September 20th, the Mies van der Rohe Society will be offering a rare tour, including a wine reception at the home of Don Powell, of the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments.  Tickets aren't cheap, but proceeds go towards restoration of The God Box, the Mies van der Rohe designed Carr Memorial Chapel on the IIT campus.

We've also gotten more information on Preservation Chicago's annual benefit, Friday, September 23rd,  at the Logan Square Arts Center, in the 1930 Art Deco building originally designed for the Hump Hair Pin Manufacturing Company, complete with camels, the company mascot, in the structure's spandrel panels.  There'll be an open bar, a silent auction, juggling, magic, jazz tunes, and Revolution brew.  Plus I'm seeing a big finale of a herd of roller-skating camels bearing popcorn and bobby pins, but now I'm thinking that may just be the after-effects of the fish I had for dinner, which may have been past it's prime.  In any event, you can get more information and purchase tickets on-line.

We're now closing in on 80 great events on the September calendar.  Check out all the details here.

Finally, we've learned of still another exhibition in what's becoming the season of Bertrand Goldberg, with The Arts Club of Chicago opening Bertrand Goldberg:Reflections to the pubic on September 16th, which . . . 

. . . examines the sources of and influences on Goldberg’s vision by looking at his personal collection of art and artifacts, his friendships with artists and intellectuals, his personal photographs, and his designs for furniture, jewelry, and functional fabrications, to provide an understanding of the man behind the public image. Unlike many architects, Goldberg did not keep a sketchbook, preferring to solve problems directly. Goldberg’s many layered solutions seem to come organically from the objects that he chose to surround himself with: works by fellow Bauhaus-associated artists Paul Klee and Max Bill, Italian artist Pietro Consagra, and his teacher Josef Albers; cultural artifacts; and sculpture and string constructions from his mother-in-law, abstract/constructivist artist Lillian Florsheim. The Arts Club’s exhibition is a rare glimpse into the “studio” of one of the most innovative architects of the 20th century.

The exhibition will run until January 13th of next year.

A Birthday Offering for Mies - the debut of The Architects Page

click images for larger views

His birthday was actually on Sunday, but the Mies van der Rohe Society is celebrating the 125th anniversary of the great architect's birth with their annual bash at Crown Hall, Monday, March 28th.  It might not be the blowout of the 1950's student dance where Mies himself sat in his new Crown Hall happily puffing on his cigar as Duke Ellington and his orchestra set the huge panes of glass shaking, but you're still promised you'll be able to . . .

Celebrate the birth of a pioneer in Modern design and learn a little something about the unique characteristics of Mies van der Rohe’s work. Come for the company, stay for the cocktails! Just what are the marks of a Mies design? Wright auction’s Michael Jefferson will talk briefly about collecting the master’s work and will highlight market trends.

The party runs from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., which leaves plenty of time for bar-crawling through your own more Miesian martini-run afterwards, and perhaps even participate in an all-out bar brawl over the size of the new window stops.  Tickets are $50.00, or $125.00 including a one-year membership in the Society, and will be available at the door.  A larger contribution, and maybe they'll let you operate the Crown Hall air vents that Ludwig Hilberseimer made it his job to open and close each day.  For more information, call 312/567.5030.

For our own celebration, we've launched The Architects Page: Mies van der Rohe, the first of what we expect will be a series of landing pages for important designers.  It's a collection of links to major articles I've done on Mies at IIT, the restoration of Crown Hall, the story of Farnsworth House and the battle to save it, and more, including links to books, websites, and even a brief video of Mies himself explaining the origin of a very famous phrase.   Plus a gallery of photographs.  Check it all out here.

Mies Tweets! (and he's got a great new website, too)

click images for larger view

The Mies van der Rohe society has just launched a new website, designed by Scott Thomas, whose credits include serving as 2008 design director for Obama for America.

It's an impressive piece of work, and a major addition to Mies on the web. It's centered on a timeline of Mies' life and work, from his 1886 birth in Aachen, Germany; his years as an infant removing unnecessary parts from his high chair, and a comprehensive account of designs, from the 1907 Riehl House, his first project,  to the legendary 1921 proposal for an all-glass Friedrichstrasse Office Building, the path-breaking 860-880 Lake Shore Apartments (many photographs), all the way through to the posthumous IBM Building.

Although the entry page is the usual black-and-white, there's also a generous sampling of color photographs that provide a less abstracted, more real feel of what the buildings are actually like.  There's also a generous sampling of of models, as well as of Mies' own drawings.

There's also a related blog, which features such interesting stuff as this poster for a benefit from earlier this year.    In addition to the 1958 Seagram Building being listed among the projects, there's also a link in the blog to a fascinating 1968 documentary created  and narrated by urbanist William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, centered on an intensive study of why the Seagram's plaza is one of the most popular in New York.

whyte styles from chris woebken on Vimeo.

The website is both an impressive work of scholarship and a valuable research tool. Perhaps most striking, however, even beyond the buildings, is the full text of various speeches made by Mies, including what he had to say at a 1938 banquet welcoming him to Chicago, after Frank Lloyd Wright introduced him by saying "I give you my Mies van der Rohe. You treat him well and love him as I do," and then left the room and retreated to the bar.

Mies was far from humourless, but you won't find any of those humanizing anecdotes on the website.  It would be easy to have a bit of fun with Mies' portentousness, but in an age where it often seems that our core values are little more than to be entertained and diverted, and where our architecture frequently appears all too happy to cater to those attitudes just to escape the anonymity of a supply-chain economy whose relentless drive is to reduce everything to an interchangeable commodity, it's bracing to read what Mies had to say as he took on leadership of the IIT School of Architecture, at a time when seriousness was something, not to be deprecated, but embraced, however imperfectly:

Any education must be directed, first of all, towards the practical side of life. But if one may speak of real education, then it must go farther and reach the personal sphere and lead to a molding of the human being.

The first aim should be to qualify the person to maintain himself in everyday life. It is to equip him with the necessary knowledge and ability for this purpose. The second aim is directed towards a formation of the personality. It should qualify him to make the right use of his knowledge and ability.

Genuine education is aimed not only towards specific ends but also towards an appreciation of values. Our aims are bound up with the special structure of our epoch. Values, on the contrary, are anchored in the spiritual destination of mankind. The ends, towards which we strive, determine the character of our civilization, while the values we set determine our cultural level.

. . . If education has any sense whatever, then it is to form character and develop insight. It must lead us out of the irresponsibility of opinion, into the responsibility of insight, judgment, and understanding; it must lead us out of the realm of chance and arbitrariness into the clear light of intellectual order. Therefore we guide our students over the disciplinary road from material through function to form.

. . . Here the problem of technology will come within the student’s compass. We will try to propound genuine questions: questions on the value and meaning of technology. We will demonstrate that it not only offers us power, and magnitude, but that it also embraces dangers, that it contains good and evil, and that here mankind must decide aright.

 . .  We will make the organic principle of order clear as a scale for establishing the significance and proportion of the parts and their relation to the whole.

We will adopt this last principle as the basis of our work.

The long road from the material through function to form has only one goal: to create order out of the unholy confusion of today. We want, however, an order which gives everything its proper place. We want to give to everything that which is its due, in accordance with its nature.

We are determined to do that in such a perfect way, that the world of our creation begins to flower from within. We want no more – nor can we do more.

Nothing will express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of Thomas Aquinas:

"Beauty is the Radiance of the Truth."

You can read the entire speech here, and visit the Mies van der Rohe Society website here.