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The Artless Word: Mies Van Der Rohe on the Building Art
Mies van der Rohe's architecture has been well documented, yet his writings, which contain the key to understanding his work, have been largely unexplored. From a body of writing that is surprisingly large for the self-described "unwilling author," Fritz Neumeyer reconstructs the metaphysical and philosophical inquiry on which Mies based his modernism.
An appendix presents all of the essential texts by Mies, including some that have not previously appeared in English. Of special interest is the manuscript notebook from the Mies van der Rohe Archive in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, dating from the crucial years 1927-28 and published for the first time in this book.
An appendix presents all of the essential texts by Mies, including some that have not previously appeared in English. Of special interest is the manuscript notebook from the Mies van der Rohe Archive in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, dating from the crucial years 1927-28 and published for the first time in this book.
- GenresArchitecture
416 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 1994
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April 28, 2012
OK, I'm a Mies nut — or was.
I read this first when it came out in German in 1986, and went back years after I had completed my dissertation on a completely different period and problem set — THAT's how good this book is.
Here is what I wrote as a review of the German edition:
"I read this book with enormous relish when it appeared in the Mies centennial year of 1986, and went to meet the author at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum because I was utterly blown away by his exhaustive command of the primary source materials — including the kind of granular examination of Mies' marginalia in his own personal library. A true, riveting intellectual sleuth story about the ideas that animated the towering genius of modern architecture, its theory and pedagogy. I have been a fan of Neumeyer's work ever since he published this, the book *I* wanted to write!"
Needless to say, there are few books one may read profitably in two languages nearly a decade apart.
This is one of them.
I read this first when it came out in German in 1986, and went back years after I had completed my dissertation on a completely different period and problem set — THAT's how good this book is.
Here is what I wrote as a review of the German edition:
"I read this book with enormous relish when it appeared in the Mies centennial year of 1986, and went to meet the author at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum because I was utterly blown away by his exhaustive command of the primary source materials — including the kind of granular examination of Mies' marginalia in his own personal library. A true, riveting intellectual sleuth story about the ideas that animated the towering genius of modern architecture, its theory and pedagogy. I have been a fan of Neumeyer's work ever since he published this, the book *I* wanted to write!"
Needless to say, there are few books one may read profitably in two languages nearly a decade apart.
This is one of them.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review