Messy Mies and the Massive Middle | makeArchitecture

Skokie / United States / 2012

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3 Love 786 Visits Published
Upon visiting Mies’s landmark 1947 exhibition at MoMA, the designer Charles Eames wrote “The significant thing seems to be the way in which [Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says, ‘This is what it is all about.’” The exhibition Messy Mies and the Massive Middle appropriates this way of seeing and elaborates and riffs upon it. Messy Mies explores the relationship between furniture and architecture, viewer and model, effect and detail, document and design, and size and scale. The exhibit features three models: the Barcelona Pavilion, a 1940 design of the IIT Campus and one that Charles Eames never saw at MoMA: the Brussels Pavilion. The Brussels Pavilion is the equivalent of flyover country in Miesian architectural histories. It is also an immensely powerful work that is revealed in its fullness for the first time in Messy Mies. Retractable, analog guides create framed views in each of the architectural models. These frames inform with commentary, illustrations and comparisons without resorting to digital means. This low-fi invitation asks much of the viewer and rewards equally or better in terms of the viewer’s effort. This experience is akin to radio rather than color TV. Messiness conveys two meanings. The first is literal messiness. For instance, Mies’s Brussels drawings are dimensioned incorrectly. The second is ambiguity–in the confusion of the structural system of the Barcelona Pavilion–that imbues Mies’s best work with magic and élan. Massive expresses the Luxor-like scale of Brussels, and the Middle conveys the hybrid nature of its form, massing and detailing. Brussels also stands chronologically midway–the Middle reference–between Barcelona and the later IIT Campus, the two other models presented. We have taken documents of Mies’s architecture and arranged and riffed on them to create Messy Mies and the Massive Middle. This is what it is about.
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    Upon visiting Mies’s landmark 1947 exhibition at MoMA, the designer Charles Eames wrote “The significant thing seems to be the way in which [Mies] has taken documents of his architecture and furniture and used them as elements in creating a space that says, ‘This is what it is all about.’” The exhibition Messy Mies and the Massive Middle appropriates this way of seeing and elaborates and riffs upon it. Messy Mies explores the relationship between furniture and architecture, viewer and model,...

    Project details
    • Year 2012
    • Work started in 2012
    • Main structure Mixed structure
    • Client Self
    • Status Current works
    • Type Exhibition Design / Custom Furniture / Exhibitions /Installations
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