Is it too late to adapt Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis'
Mies-on-a-beam speculative project to the reality of X condo?
Say it isn't, Gary!
http://archidose.blogspot.com/2006/05/mies-on-beam.html
Alas, U.S., why introduce utilitarianism into the platonic world of the Miesian ideal?
Essential reading on the subject can be found in the book
American Buildings and Their Architects: The Impact of European Modernism in the Mid-Twentieth Century,written by William H. Jordy in 1976. Chapter IV is titled "The Laconic Splendour of the Metal Frame: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 860 Lake Shore Apartments and his Seagram Building". Within it, Mies is quoted about the exterior I-beams on 860:
"Questioned at the time of the building's completion about the welding of the largely unessential I's to the outer face of the structural columns, Mies replied, "Now, first, I am going to tell you the real reason, and then I am going to tell you a good reason by itself.
"It was very important to preserve and extend the rythym which the mullions set up on the rest of the building. We looked at it on the model without the steel section attached to the column and it did not look right. Now, the other reason is that this steel section was needed to stiffen the plate which covers the corner column so this plate would not ripple, and also we needed it for strength when the sections were hoisted into place. Now, of course, that's a very
good, but the other reason is the real reason."
Architectural Forum, November 1952, p.99.
Jordy goes on to write:
"Because these modern artifacts [the I-beams] articulate the walls of the Chicago towers much as pilasters articulated a classical or Renaissance wall, they simultaneously reinvigorate the whole of the great classicizing tradition for present use. The old stability fuses with the new dynamics; the essence of historical prinicple with the new functionalism." p.243
