foreign oil problems in contrast Solutions foreign foreign and the things themselves often the proportion between the things you know there's nothing but still there is a purpose he did not pretend to solve all problems he was simply working on a particular language of Discovery searching for the symbols of our time the psyche of our time and beginning to draw that language to be elaborated by others [Music] and a clown polish and discipline Within the results [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] Miss Vander was born in Germany and worked there until moving to Chicago in 1938
it's with designs for two unbilled houses in his home country where we can see the First Leap toward an open plan the two houses we'll compare are the Lessing house and the brick house both of which Meese was working on at the same time even though they exhibit fundamentally different approaches to space the Lessing house plan is a complex of rectangles broken into a few primary shapes that are combined together each primary shape is subdivided into a series of neatly adjacent rectangular rooms some rooms are more private and removed some are actually Courtyards or outdoor
spaces contained within the primary envelope of the house while anyone looking at this house would still call it modern it does not yet exhibit the qualities of an open plan then there's the brick house and it's here where Mis is really able to propose a new level of continuity between the interior and the exterior space he achieves this by focusing on the wall as a primary architectural element and liberating it to do things Beyond just the job of creating enclosure and The Brick House the walls are independent entities that seem to explode into a composition
of spaced out right angled lines the walls stop and start at will and seem like they only just happened to coalesce into a house the line between inside and outside is hardly registered by the walls alone and some walls extend so far out in the landscape they almost seem like they could go on forever Meese found a way to dissolve the legibility of the building by challenging its outer boundary walls don't just trace the boundary of the building or rooms anymore they're placed almost randomly relatively to the boundary of the house and in some cases
even run perpendicular to it pointing outward into the landscape Beyond the concept of space is presented as an even field where the architect manipulates portions of this field in a gradient fashion almost like gravity influences certain zones in the universe a couple of years later Amis is able to realize his design for the Barcelona Pavilion a building constructed as part of the world Exposition in 1929 and was meant to present Germany to the world as a Thoroughly Modern and pacifist country after their role in World War one in this structure walls are again deployed in
such a way so as to express their independence and Liberation as elements that can do things other than merely enclosed space while there is a guiding grid on the ground as a reference pattern for organization and composition the walls are intentionally misaligned with the grid and me sets up the rules and the expectations for a rigid organization and then he completely disregards them this enhances the perception that these elements are under the influence of some guiding force that operates at a level independent from this initial framework the walls of the Barcelona Pavilion are still made
of block or brick but in this case they're framed with veneers of marble this pattern in colorful lining wraps the wall like a present and further defines it as a singular element or object without the visible markers that subdivide it into discrete Parts like bricks the wall is the important and expressed thing and we as visitors don't perceive the parts that are gathered together to make it up we as occupants are also left to interpret whether the wall is recruited to help withhold up the roof that's because the building also includes a small regular grid
of structural columns the grid is almost treated like a discrete object unto itself it's not an endless field instead it stops and starts well before it encounters any natural edges of the building the grid is relegated to just a small area within the explosion of the walls The Columns are impossibly thin chrome-clad crosses the shape of the color marks a singular point in space and the chrome reflective material challenges observers to perceive their true size further the column's thinness reveals that they can't be trusted to do all the work of holding up the roof so
structurally the walls and the columns must be working together even if compositionally it looks like they're placed in a haphazard relationship nowhere is this more poignant than at the entrance of the interior of the Pavilion where two columns are placed perfectly aligned against a background wall The Columns are presented almost like a still life artwork to be viewed complete with a backdrop while elements appear to be slipping past one another in Space the elements sometimes snap perfectly into a precise composition interior finally we can take a look at mises Farnsworth House in Plano Illinois where
the open plan finds yet another level of expression the house is a glass box hanging from the standard I-beam columns located on the outside of the building this configuration is called an umbrella diagram where the roof is held up from outside support and the interior is free from structure altogether again we have an unmolested regular grid of columns in the Farnsworth House however whereas the crosses are the same in two directions i-beams have a singular orientation which gives a grain and a direction to the underlying grid a rectangle that includes the house has an enclosed
Zone and an open one there's an ambiguous reading to the collection one way to read it is as two parallel linear arrangements and the other is as an even field That Could Be Imagined to continue in any direction here the wall loses its Primacy as the building is a few horizontal planes with some furniture and a built-in wooden object that holds functional elements like the kitchen and the bathrooms the wooden object doesn't go all the way to the ceiling so as to reind Force the idea that it's an object set within the field that are
defined by The Columns and the horizontal planes the wooden object is located so as to provide spatial differentiation where necessary there's a minimum amount of elements to provide the maximum amount of spatial articulation despite the lack of walls it is still possible to point out the dining room the kitchen the bedroom and the living room sheets of glass that span clear between the floor slab and the ceiling provide the limited enclosure of the house these are lined with a track of curtains which open and close depending on the inhabitants desire for privacy or for shading
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