Introduction To History of Contemporary Architecture
Introduction To History of Contemporary Architecture
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Seagram Building, New York (1954-58) - (Federico
Bucci)
Looking at Park Avenue, Manhattan, from this splendid window draped with a curtain made from
fine metal chains, is a unique experience which, alone, is worth a visit to the Four Seasons restaurant,
a meeting place for celebrities since the late 1950s. We are at the ground floor of the Seagram Building,
New York’s most beautiful skyscraper, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson and
inaugurated in 1958. More specifically, perhaps, we are inside a place where time has stopped in the
middle of modern civilisation’s most mature and successful season: that short period during which
American engineering embraced the great European culture. The design of Seagram Building’s interior
spaces, including those of the famous restaurant, was entrusted by Mies to Philip Johnson, his co-worker
at the time and later known for the casual and provocative stylistic eclecticism of his work. However,
the source to which he is inspired for the spectacular solution of the curtains undoubtedly belongs to
the history of German architecture: in fact, it comes from the bedroom for Queen Louise of Prussia in
Charlottenburg Castle, designed in 1809 by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, one of the architects who most
influenced Mies. This is well explained by Phyllis Lambert, founder of the Canadian Centre for
Architecture and also daughter of Samuel Bronfman, the Canadian magnate that commissioned the
Seagram Building: in her recently-published book, she examined the history of the skyscraper’s
construction, right from the choice of the architect, who she herself proposed to her father. We began
by discussing a construction detail, not only because, as Mies used to say, “God is in the details”, but
also because the beauty of this skyscraper lies in the way in which the choice of materials embellishes
and makes unique the simplicity of its form: a dark, metallic monolith facing onto a white stone
platform, with marble benches, pools of water and plants. Let us go on, now, to list the building’s
measurements: the total height of the tower is approximately 157 metres (the original measurement is
515 feet), with 39 floors, built on a rectangular plan 26.7 metres wide and 43.6 long; to the rear is
attached a lower body. The load-bearing structure is a steel and concrete central core clad in travertine;
the envelope is made from bronze T-beams and smoke grey glass walls; and, finally, the flooring of the
atrium and external plaza is made of granite. In the description of the newly-completed skyscraper,
published in the January 1959 issue of the Italian architecture magazine Casabella-Continuità, we read