Mies van der Rohe:
Mies in Berlin
Winner of
The Society of Architectural Historians
2002 Philip Johnson Award
for Excellence
Exhibition Catalog
a groundbreaking 2001 exhibition at
The Museum of Modern Art, New York."
"It would have been wiser for the new MoMA catalog… to have addressed the issue of his politics…. By ignoring such a central subject… the show gives off a mild stench of cover-up…. Only the German-born Rosemarie Haag Bletter (full disclosure: she is my wife) alludes to the verboten topic in her [catalog] essay on Mies's flirtation with crystal imagery, drawing a sharp parallel between the architect's extensive use of Kristallglas (plate glass) and the ensuing devastation of Kristallnacht, which erupted just three months after he left for the States."
"Mies's rigorously simplified structures, typified by grids of steel and glass and an absence of applied ornament, represented the Platonic ideal of modernism for many people."
Log24.net entry of Tuesday noon,
see the following figure in two versions:
Diamond Theory,
and Version B,
from the date of Johnson's death
at his "famous crystalline box."
Was less more?