A post without pictures
Circumstance required me to bike through the I.I.T. campus on this wonderful spring day, and I was shocked -- shocked by the dark, funereal beauty of the Mies Van Der Rohe buildings -- all stretched out in a line -- like the elements of a circuit board. (the place has a very high-tech vibe!)
Pictures can't do these buildings justice (which is why I'm not showing any)
Their proportions -- and relations to the surrounding space -- have to be felt on site -- and contrary to the impression that photographs had given me -- they aren't just glass-steel blocks that have been plunked on a lawn -- there's often a kind of chthonic interface -- so appropriate for the overall feeling of stately dirge.
And those damn glass boxes are dramatic ! Hung, as they are, from great, black steel lintels.
My eyes have suffered through so many cheap-ugly-minimalist office buildings -- I was all set to send Mies to Hell for setting the trend -- but now I am ready to issue a reprieve.
Less can be more -- even if it almost never is.
Pictures can't do these buildings justice (which is why I'm not showing any)
Their proportions -- and relations to the surrounding space -- have to be felt on site -- and contrary to the impression that photographs had given me -- they aren't just glass-steel blocks that have been plunked on a lawn -- there's often a kind of chthonic interface -- so appropriate for the overall feeling of stately dirge.
And those damn glass boxes are dramatic ! Hung, as they are, from great, black steel lintels.
My eyes have suffered through so many cheap-ugly-minimalist office buildings -- I was all set to send Mies to Hell for setting the trend -- but now I am ready to issue a reprieve.
Less can be more -- even if it almost never is.
posted by chris miller at 7:08 PM
1 Comments:
Nice to go away.
Nice to come back and find Chris wheeling through the world, liking and disliking and flinging his opinions.
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