The Presence of Mies

by Detlef Mertins

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568980132
• ISBN13: 9781568980133
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 1.0" x 1.0"

Customer Reviews

Re-Modernizing Mies

This book is emblemmatic of the recent re-presentation of Mies. It is not the normative reading of his work and significance. Having fallen from grace in the 1980s, Mies was resurrected in the 90s by neo-modernist architects and architectural historians. The recent twin Mies exhibitions in New York (at MoMA and the Whitney) are byproducts of the rebirth of Mies. The essays of this book will make grand claims to position Mies van der Rohe as a misunderstood genius identified with a few seminal buildings and denigrated by association with all the pathetic copies of his work perpetrated around the world by drone architects of the International Style. Gratefully, the resurrection of Mies includes a cold, hard look at his notion of "site" and of "landscape" - however impoverished the sense of the latter might be in his usual glass-box-on-podium formula. The rationalist Mies was an invention of the purveyors of the International Style, Philip Johnson first among culprits, but also of Mies himself. His carefully crafted public persona buried many aspects of his personality and his work that are only now coming to light. It is only now that Mies is able to be seen as a putative poet of form with a troubled, albeit checkered history of surfing trends in the 1910s and 1920s (while in Berlin) till he found his place in formulating the architectural language and image of modern corporate America.