Photographic modern architecture: inside 'the New Deep'

摘要

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe liked looking at things, and Adolf Loos liked feeling their presence, or so we might conclude from selective evidence. Mies's early photomontages, his engagement with the media, his clear preference for perspective drawing, his concern for surface treatment in architecture, his framing of views, his appreciation of modern painting, all contrast with Loos's stringent written polemic against pictorialism of several kinds. By contrast, Mies has nearly nothing to say about visual matters at all in his sparse writings; he's most eloquent when talking about invisible things, like spirits, or the spirit. One exception to this, by hearsay only, is found in George Nelson's 1935 Pencil Points article, which was part of the series, 'Architects of Today'. In recounting a visit of the architect's to the completed Tugendhat House, in which Mies enjoyed the visual spectacle of his own work, Nelson wrote.