Mies van der Rohe – Less is More
part 1 of 7
Visions Of Space, BBC Documentary 2003
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First aired BBC4, 2003; ABC, 2004 In ‘Visions of Space’, Robert Hughes tackles the work and lives of three remarkable 20th-century architects: Albert Speer, Mies van der Rohe, and Antonio Gaudi – whose work did so much to shape the modern world.
Hughes looks at how each one used space in different ways to express our response, respectively, to the power of religion (Gaudi), the power of the State (Speer), and the power of the corporation (Mies van der Rohe).
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 – 1969)
This BBC episode features the German architect, Mies van der Rohe, who moved to America and discovered the face of the modern corporate city.
Following Mies’ footsteps we see how an architect who began his career making kitschy, Hansel and Gretel style houses with pointy roofs, little windows and squat floorplans transformed himself into the master of international modernism – the architect of light and space.
Mies is the father of the contemporary vogue for loft living – what he was building in the 1920s still looks futuristic now. Similarly, his New York masterpiece the Seagrams Building provided the blueprint for the modern office building – without Mies no major city on Earth would look as it does.
But despite his undeniable impact there is something in Mies’ work that Hughes finds shockingly neglectful of real human needs. This master builder could spend days working out how to turn a corner with a skilfully placed beam and totally ignore the legitimate wishes and desires of those who used his buildings.
Nevertheless, Mies definition of real order and how this influences his work was: “The real order is that what St. Augustine said about the the disposition of equal and unequal things – giving to each what deserves, according to their nature.”
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recomended further reading: ‘Mies and the Nazis’ in www.guardian.co.uk
Duration : 0:9:52
[youtube rUQdQWf4otU]
adolf loos
louis …
adolf loos
louis kahn
santiago calatrava …
santiago calatrava
daniel libeskind
lord norman foster
gehry
zaha hadid
le corbusier
le corbusier
got more?
got more?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Great documentary. …
Great documentary. I think the narrator is a little harsh on the National Gallery but I think he is right about some of the architecture at IIT being a little bland.
who are the others? …
who are the others?
with no doubt one …
with no doubt one of the top 5 architects of all time
If you go to the …
If you go to the eastern Block countries ” Albainia” for example, the same thing happend: Only the very wealthy and multinationals can afford the “Bauhaus”- Mies-ian ideal… heating and maintenance cost are too high. How do we move on???
It was the ideal of …
It was the ideal of the artist / architects like Walter Copius and Mies van der Rohe that modern man should live in simply designed houses with lots of light, adequate space and sanitation. As we know too well in the UK these projects were mostly failures… cutting cost by using small windows, tiny rooms, wrong “cheaper” materials which showed horrible water & rust marks and stingyness of councils to spend money on maintanence work has made inner cites of the UK eye sores.
you see, less is …
you see, less is more…
was not so much hard to find gaudi and mies, but arrch those were enormous mpeg files… so for visions-of-space big fans its wise to save flv copies… and yess, all three are excellent documentaries
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH …
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY GODDDDDDDDDD haahaha THANK U SOOO MUCH ahahaha