"Mies in America offers readers a deeper immersion into Mies's thought than has been attempted before. Venturing a more complex response than the familiar reading of Mies as a grand master of modernism, these essays retrace the genesis of Mies's design in order to uncover his ambitions, investigate the implicit outlines of the Miesian city, follow the process of designing for America, and look at Mies as a touchstone for contemporary practice."--Jacket.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was one of the leading figures of twentieth-century architecture. For architects and many others who are committed to the modernist tradition, he is a pivotal figure. With in-depth, scholarly essays and opulent photographs and plans, this book traces the multifaceted development of his work, including his first Berlin buildings, his villa projects, his work at the Bauhaus in the 1930s, and his American projects of the postwar years. Jean-Louis Cohen was the director of the Institut français d'architecture until 2003 and is currently a professor at New York University. He has an established reputation as a leading international historian of architecture. His broad and encompassing perspective makes this book a reliable and comprehensive introduction to the work of Mies van der Rohe. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe gehörte zu den führenden Persönlichkeiten in der Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts und ist für Architekten und viele andere, die sich der Tradition der Moderne verpflichtet haben, eine Schlüsselfigur. Mit wissenschaftlich fundierten Texten und opulentem Plan- und Fotomaterial zeichnet das Buch die facettenreiche Entwicklung seines Werkes nach: Die ersten Berliner Bauten, seine Villenprojekte und Tätigkeit am Bauhaus in den dreißiger Jahren sowie die amerikanischen Projekte der Nachkriegszeit. Jean-Louis Cohen, bis 2003 Direktor des Institut français d'architecture und zur Zeit Professor an der New York University, hat einen etablierten Ruf als international führender Architekturhistoriker. Seine umfassende Perspektive macht das Buch zu einer verlässlichen Einführung in das Werk Mies van der Rohes.
"After the Bauhaus's closing in 1933, many of its protagonists movd to the United States, where their acceptance had to be cultivated. In this book Margret Kentgens-Craig shows that the fame of the Bauhaus in America was the result not only of the inherent qualities of its concepts and products, but also of a unique congruence of cultural supply and demand, of a consistent flow of information, and of fine-tuned marketing. Thus the history of the American reception of the Bauhaus in the 1920s and 1930s foreshadows the paterns of fame-making that became typical of the post-World War II art world."--BOOK JACKET.
Lafayette Park, an affordable middle-class residential area in downtown Detroit, is home to the largest collection of buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the world. Today, it is one of Detroit's most racially integrated and economically stable neighborhoods, although it is surrounded by evidence of a city in financial distress. Through interviews with and essays by residents; reproductions of archival material; and new photographs by Karin Jobst, Vasco Roma, and Corine Vermeulen, and previously unpublished photographs by documentary filmmaker Janine Debanné, Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies examines the way that Lafayette Park residents confront and interact with this unique modernist environment. Lafayette Park has not received the level of international attention that other similar projects by Mies have. This may be due in part to its location in Detroit, a city whose most positive qualities are often overlooked in the media. This book is a reaction against the way that iconic modernist architecture is often represented. Whereas other writers may focus on the design intentions of the architect, authors Aubert, Cavar and Chandani seek to show the organic and idiosyncratic ways that the people who live in Lafayette Park actually use the architecture and how this experience, in turn, affects their everyday lives. While there are many publications about abandoned buildings in Detroit and about the city's prosperous past, this book is about a remarkable part of the city as it exists today, in the twenty-first century.
10 Buildings that Changed America tells the stories of ten influential works of architecture, the people who imagined them, and the way these landmarks ushered in innovative cultural shifts throughout our society. The book takes readers on a journey across the country and inside these groundbreaking works of art and engineering. The buildings featured are remarkable not only for aesthetic and structural reasons, but also because their creators instilled in them a sense of purpose and personality that became reflected in an overarching sense the American identity. Edited by the staff of WTTW, the Chicago PBS affiliate that is the most-watched public television station in the country, 10 Buildings will be released alongside the national broadcast of an hour-long special by the same name. This television event will be promoted over digital media, on-ground events, and educational initiatives in schools, and the book will be a significant component to all of these elements. 10 Buildings retells the shocking, funny, and even sad stories of how these buildings came to be. It offers a peek inside the imaginations of ten daring architects who set out to change the way we live, work, and play. From American architectural stalwarts like Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, to modern revolutionaries like Frank Gehry and Robert Venturi, this book examines the most prominent buildings designed by the most noteworthy architects of our time. Also profiled are Americans less noted for their architectural acumen, but no less significant for their contributions to the field. Thomas Jefferson, a self-taught architect, is profiled for designing the iconic Virginia State Capitol. Taking its inspiration from ancient Rome, America's first major public building forged a philosophical link between America and the world's earliest democracies. Similarly, Henry Ford employed Albert Kahn to design a state-of-the-art, innovative factory for Ford's groundbreaking assembly line. Reinforced concrete supported massive, open rooms without any interior dividing walls, which yields the uninterrupted space that was essential for Ford's sprawling continuous production setups. What's more, Kahn considered the needs of workers by including astonishingly modern large windows and louvers for fresh air. The design of each of these ten buildings was completely monumental and prodigious in its time because of the architect’s stylistic or functional innovations. Each was also highly influential, inspiring a generation or more of architects, who in turn made a lasting impact on the American landscape. We see the legacy of architects like Mies van der Rohe or H.H. Richardson all around us: in the homes where we live, the offices where we work, our public buildings, and our houses of worship. All have been shaped in one way or another by a handful of imaginative, audacious, and sometimes even arrogant individuals throughout history whose bold ideas have been copied far and wide. 10 Buildings is the ideal collection to detail the flashes of inspiration from these architects who dared to strike out on their own and design radical new types of buildings that permanently altered our environmental and cultural landscape.
"In 1945, Edith Farnsworth asked the German architect Mies van der Rohe, already renowned for his avant-garde buildings, to design a weekend home for her outside of Chicago. Edith was a woman ahead of her time--unmarried, she was a distinguished medical researcher, whose discoveries put her in contention for the Nobel Prize, as well as an accomplished violinist, translator, and poet. The two quickly began an intimate relationship, spending weekends together, sharing interests in transcendental philosophy, Catholic mysticism, wine-soaked picnics, and architecture. Their collaboration would produce one of the most important works of architecture of all time, a blindingly original house made up almost entirely of glass and steel. But the minimalist marvel, built in 1951, was plagued by cost over-runs and a sudden chilling of the two friends' mutual affection. Though the building became world-famous, Farnsworth found it impossible to live in the transparent house, and she began a public campaign against him, cheered on by Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies, in turn, sued her for unpaid monies. The ensuing trial covered not just the missing funds and the structural weaknesses of the home, but turned into a trial of modernist art and architecture itself. Interweaving personal drama and cultural history, Alex Beam presents a stylish, enthralling tapestry of a tale, illuminating the fascinating history behind one of the twentieth-century's most beautiful and significant architectural projects"--
"The thirty years modernist legend Mies van der Rohe spent working in America arguably reflect his most consistent and mature efforts toward achieving his goal: a new architecture for the twentieth century. Focusing on this American period, Conversations with Mies van der Rohe gives new credence to this claim by presenting the architect's most important design concerns in his own words. In this collection of interviews Mies talks freely about his relationship with clients, the common language he sought in his architectural projects, the influences on his work, and the synthesis of architecture and technology that he advanced in his designs and built works. An essay by Inaki Abalos provides a context for these interviews and looks at Mies's legacy from a contemporary perspective."--
The Presence of Mies is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that reconsiders the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, putting forth new ways of thinking about his work and new possibilities for extending its influence into contemporary architecture and cultural theory. The work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of this century's most important architects, has alternately been revered and reviled. The diverse outlook of the contributors produces a stimulating array of perspectives that consider the multiple resonances of Mies's work in relation to technology, image culture, philosophy, art, and education. Editor Detlef Mertins and president and director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Phyllis Lambert, reconsider aspects of Mies's research and practice. Fritz Neumeyer, whose book on Mies's writings, The Artless Word is a point of reference for many Mies scholars, and Sanford Kwinter both address architecture's relationship to technology; Dan Hoffman and Ben Nicholson discuss the pedagogical ambitions and work of their design studios, at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Illinois Institute of Technology, respectively, where they have extended and transformed aspects of Mies's architecture and teaching. Rosalind Krauss and Ignasi de Sol-Morales Rubi stake out opposed interpretations of Minimalism and Mies. Rebecca Comay and George Baird both test-drive Mies through the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Brian Boigon and Beatriz Colomina address Mies in relation to "the culture of images," while K. Michael Hays proposes new interpretations of Mies's abstraction. The Presence of Mies also includes over 120 black and white illustrations of the master's buildings. These essays result from a symposium organized by the University of Toronto School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture marking the 25th Anniversary of a monolithic Miesian edifice, The Toronto-Dominion Centre, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1963 (called by Philip Johnson "the biggest Mies in the world").
Part 3 is devoted to the epidemiology of influenza, the current etiological pattern of acute respiratory diseases in the USSR, the immunology of influenza and influenza prophylaxis in the USSR. Other topics reviewed include antigenic drift in the hemagglutinin of Hong Kong (H3N2) virus over the period of its circulation, RIA techniques of determining the influenza virus nucleoprotein and the persistence of influenza virus in different biological systems.
