God of materials and details in architecture world, Mies van der Rohe.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT 1931 american architecture where he metioned "WHEN YOU GET BELOW THE SURFACE, NO MATTER HOW PLAIN MODERNISTIC IS, IT IS STILL MERELY ORNAMENTAL"

One would say that Mies's building looks like the simplest things you could imagine where there is glass box and some steel showing its structural parts. Modern was supposed to remarked the world, and Mies was at the center of revolution, however, he was also a counterrevolutionary who designed beautiful things. He is probably the only modernist who created a language that still have some scent of the past where he was coming from. After the Bauhaus was forced to close, after one year of not doing any much, Mies decided to go to America while he couldn't speak any english. Yet within a few years of his arrival in Chicago, where they had a major tragedy, fire and people strive for the new design of architecture as well as when America won World war II and want the world to know that they were powerful and won by the newest technologies so Mies had become the most powerful aesthetic force in American architecture after Frank Lloyd Wright.  He wasn't a kind of person who rhapsodizing about glories of architecture, his only interest was in physical form, and he was fanatical in his search for ways to perfect it. Most of Mies's building were a lot more complicated than they appeared, and he was willing as many other architect to indulge in ornament when it suited his purposes. I personally see this kind of move about flexibilities of how he viewed or wanted people to perceived architecture is quite a good approach to what we should learn from him. That's architecture is flexible and can stray from what you've believe before. One of good example is a Seagram Building, if you look carefully , you see that the exterior isn't flat, but is lined with little I-beams between the windows. They aren't part of the structure which was against the believed of Modernism where everything has to function. They were put there to provided texture and to make the building softer. On the sides of the Seagram, where the structural engineers had demanded solid concrete wall to stabilize the narrow tower against heavy wind loads, Mies was covering the concrete by marble and then put the I- beam on top so that it would look like the framing around the windows like elsewhere in the building. 

He was also the architect who concerned about the details and materials. I think, he was paying this much attention because his family business as well as the place that he came from was plenty of Gothic architecture. It was the first architecture that allowed that much transparency into the building. Gothic was the first style in classical that overcome stone and i think, we can't count Mies as a religious architect but those works might influences him in some way about transparency.

Back to America, before Mies was transforming the cities, the architecture there was quite solid, masonry cladding was the main ideal building at that time. He transform the cities into the glass boxes skyscrapers that he was trying to use glass as a reflective elements to reflect all of the context like a painting.

Another, controversial work of his is the famous "Farnsworth house" where there showing the flowing into each spaces and it was sitting on the land that actually have 3 levels but Mies decided to put the house into the lowest level beside the river where there is a flood every year. He overlooked that matter because he only concerned with continuous line of the house and landscape i suppose. This house also showed his obsession over details where he uses a few honest materials and painted white to make the building look pure and floating. He also concerned about the notch that had to be in the finest condition and so the workers had to sand till those notch actually almost invisible before painted.

Fransworth house in flooding condition.

           

This house was also being compare as a manipulation from Temple of Greek or the modern building that interpretive from Greek architecture. I would leave that for you to decide. 

The Crown hall is another piece of architecture that Mies created upon his obsession of materials. It was building by steel and glass. The building sit in the cold area where steel wasn't a really good choice of material.

crown hall

Mies used to teach here where he didn't speak much but what he concerned and teach the students the most is how to use the materials and how to build or cut them. As well as how to assemble the different pieces of materials. Below is some fine example of how he concentrated on detail of materials.

     

There are some works of Mies that is bad and good. Some of his work seem so simple, too simple, where they raised the raise another quote that went against Mies which is " Less is bore" by Venturi. However, if we overlooked that and see what he teach us as an architecture student, we would appreciate that he actually exist where he teach us about how to appreciate the materials, the textile of them. how we should care about the details of each building that we will build in future, hopefully. As well as, the way to do our own design by not just following the label that he had before as a Modernist where everything had to function.