The millennium's most important building: The Seagram building
05/03/2014.
375 Park Avenue. [NYC] USA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
It was the end of the millennium, lotteries everywhere, classifications were made and even the end of the world was announced. In those last years of the twentieth century, the undisputed critic on architecture in the United States without a doubt one of the most important of his time was Herbert Muschamp.
1950 "A Monumental Undertaking" The Seagram Building is completed in 1958 and hailed as a modern architectural masterpiece. The striking skyscraper will be the headquarters of the Seagram Liquor Company.
1960 "A Source of Inspiration" The Seagram Building's public plaza becomes a popular gathering place, inspiring the City of New York to enact new zoning incentives for developers to create "privately owned public spaces." The Seagram Building and fountain are featured in the classic 1961 film, Breakfast at Tiffany's, starring Audrey Hepburn.
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
1970 "A New York City Landmark" In 1976 the Seagram Building's owners request designation of its exterior as an official city landmark.
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
Seagram building by Mies van deSeagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.r Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR. Click above to see larger image.
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
1980 "A Well Deserved Recognition" In 1984 the Seagram Building became a recipient of the American Institute of Architects' prestigious Twenty-Five Year Award.
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
Seagram building by Mies vanSeagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR. der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR. Click above to see larger image.
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
1990 "The Highest Honor" The interior of the Philip Johnson-designed Four Seasons Restaurant is designated a New York City landmark. In 1999, Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic of the New York Times, hails the Seagram Building as "the Millennium's most important building."
2000 "Forever New" In 2002 The Landmarks Conservancy honored Aby J. Rosen with its Chairman's Award. Aby Rosen is co-owner, along with partner Michael Fuchs, of the Seagram Building, and created the spectacular renovation of the modernist masterpiece.
Floor 8. Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
Floor 35. Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR.
Seagram building by Mies van Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR. der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson. Image courtesy of RFR. Click above to see larger image.
His writings in The New York Times were our food in the nineties, he was followed and hated by his pen, was the one who uttered the famous phrase about Seagram and pointed as the best building of the millennium. Today we have published that Norman Foster has started work on a near plot, it is good to remember the master, Mies and his work.
The 38-story Manhattan office skyscraper was designed between 1954 and 1958 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in association with Philip Johnson and is the most refined version of the modern glass tower. It faces Park Avenue across a broad plaza of pink Vermont granite, bordered on either side by reflecting pools and ledges of verd antique marble. The tower itself is a steel-framed structure wrapped in a curtain wall of pink-gray glass. Spandrels, mullions and I-beams, used to modulate the surface of the glass skin, are made of bronze. The walls and elevator banks are lined with travertine.
For much of the past thousand years, the pendulum of Western architectural taste has swung between two esthetic poles: Gothic and classical, they eventually came to be called. Because it fuses elements of both positions in a supremely elegant whole, the Seagram Building is my choice as the millennium's most important building.
By Herbert Muschamp. Published: April 18, 1999.
Mies once defined architecture as the will of an epoch translated into space. For his generation, meant overcoming the war of the styles, which had fragmented architecture into battling ideological camps.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
"God is in the Detail."
Mies van der Rohe began to experiment with designs for glass towers in the early 1920's (Few years after, he was the last Bauhaus director). He was an admirer of the philosopher Oswald Spengler, and shared Spengler's pessimistic view that the 20th century would be a time of Western cultural breakdown. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is regarded as a master of modern architecture. He created elegant, transcendent spaces with an architecture based on material honesty and structural integrity. He made use of modern materials such as glass and industrial steel to create contemplative spaces of austere elegance.
Known for his dictums, “God is in the Details“ and “less is more,“ Mies van der Rohe believed that the more truthfully buildings expressed their structure and form, the more architecture became transcendent.
Philip Johnson.
"An American Icon."
Philip Johnson was the most influential figure in American architecture of the 20th century. A student of Mies van der Rohe and Mercel Breuer, Johnson’s early work, with its innovative use of glass and steel, paid homage to his former mentors. As a critic and curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Johnson championed the work of European modernists and was largely responsible for bringing their ideas to the United States.
Johnson’s later work bridged the gap between the more “serious“ movement of Minimalism and the more populist movement of Pop art. His best work has aspects of both approaches and also incorporates historical architectural elements. A prolific architect with countless buildings to his name, Johnson transformed the urban landscape of US.
Address.- 375 Park Avenue. New York, New York 10152. US. It is located in the heart of midtown Manhattan on the east side of Park Avenue between East 52nd and 53rd Streets.
CREDITS
Architects.- Mies van der Rohe + Philip Johnson and Kahn & Jacobs (interiors)
Commissioners.- Seagram Liquor Company.
Structural Engineering.- Severud Associates.
Project Area.- 150,918 square feet.
Project Year.- 1954-1958.
More information
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aquisgran the 27th of Marz of 1886 and died in Chicago the 17th of August of 1969. He was active in Germany, from 1908 to 1938, when he moved to USA and where he was until his death. He was also considerate a “master” of the Modern Movement, since the 50s, and he was one of the fathers of this movement with Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Mies van der Rohe, who in his childhood was guided by masters as Hendrik Petrus Berlage or Peter Behrens, he always kept tabs of the Villlet-Le-Duc’s rationalism or Karl Friedrich Schinkel eclectic classicism, having a strong connection with the architectural historicism. As he said in his manifesto “Baukunst und Zeiwille” about this: “it is not possible to move on looking back”.
In 1900 he began to work with his father in the stone workshop of the family and shortly afterward he move to Berlin to work with Bruno Paul in 1902, designing furniture. He planned his first house in 1907, the “Riehl House” in Neubabelsbers and worked from 1908 to 1911 in Peter Behrens’s studio. There he was influenced by structural technics and designs based on steel and glass, as the AEG project in Berlin. While he was in Behrens’s studio he designed the Perls House.
In 1912 he openned his own studio and projected a house in The Hague for Kröller-Müller marriage. The studio received few jobs in its first years, but Mies, contrary to architects as Le Corbusier, in his first years he already showed an architectural policy to follow, being an architect that changed little his architectural philosophy. To his epoch belonged the Heertrasse House and Urbig House as his principal projects.
In 1913 se move to the outskirts of Berlin with his wife Ada Bruhn with whom he would have three kids. The family broke up when Mies was posted to Romania during the World War I.
In 1920, Ludwig Mies changed his surname to Mies van der Rohe and in 1922 he joined as member to the “Novembergruppe”. One year later, in 1923, he published the magazine “G” with Doesburg Lisstzky and Rechter. During this period he worked in two houses, the Birck House and the Mosler House. In 1926, Mies van der Rohe held the post of chief commissioner of the German Werkbund exhibition, being his president this year. In this period he projected the Wolf House in Guden and the Hermann Lange House in Krefeld and in 1927, he met the designer Lilly Reich, in the house exhibition of Weissenhof, where he was director, and he planned a steel structure block for her.
In 1929, he received the project the German National Pavilion to the International Exhibition of Barcelona) rebuilt in 1986=, where he included the design of the famous Barcelona Chair.
In 1930, he planned in Brün – present Czech Republic -, the Tugendhat Villa. He managed the Dessau’s Bauhaus until his closure in 1933. The Nazism forced Mies to emigrate to the United States in 1937. He was designated chair of the Architecture department in Armour Institute in 1938, the one that later merged with the Lewis Institute, forming the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and where he took the responsibility to build a considerable extent of the foundations of the Intitute from 1939 and 1958. One of the buildings of this complex is the Crown Hall, IIT (1950-1956).
In 1940, he met the person who would be his partner until his death, Lora Marx. He became citizen of the USA in 1944 and, one year later, he began with the Farnsworth House’s project (1945-1950). During this stage, in 1948, he designed his first skyscraper: the two towers of the Lake Drive Apartments in Chicago, which were finished in 1951. Shortly after, he planned other building of this typology, the Commonwealth Promenade Apartments, from 1953 to 1956.
In 1958 he projected his most important work: the Segram Building in New York. This building has 37 storeys, covered with glass and bronze, which built and planned with Philip Johnson. He retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology the same year. He also built more towers and complexes as: the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963-1969) and the Westmount Square (1965-1968) and designed the New Square and Office Tower of The City of London (1967).
From 1962 to 1968, he built the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which would be his last legacy to the architecture. The building that rose as exhibition hall is made of steel, glass and granite.
He died in Chicago the 17th of August if 1969 leaving behind a large legacy and influence to next generations.
The Mies van der Rohe’s most famous sentences are “Less is more” and “God is in the details”.
HERBERT MITCHELL MUSCHAMP
Herbert Mitchell Muschamp (November 28, 1947 – October 2, 2007) was an American architecture critic. Born in Philadelphia, Muschamp attended the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out after two years to move to New York City, where he was a regular at Andy Warhol's Factory. He later attended Parsons School of Design, where he studied architecture, and returned to teach after spending some time studying at the Architectural Association in London.
During this period, he began writing architectural criticism for various magazines, including Vogue, House & Garden, and Art Forum. He was appointed the architecture critic for The New Republic in 1987.
Muschamp became the architecture critic for The New York Times in 1992, succeeding Paul Goldberger. During his controversial tenure at the Times, Muschamp rose, according to Nicolai Ouroussoff, to preeminence as the nation's foremost judge of the architecture world. His writing championed now-famous architects such as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel, as well as architects that he regarded as rising talents, including Greg Lynn, Lindy Roy, Jesse Reiser, Nanako Umemoto and Casagrande & Rintala.
Muschamp was a lover of cities. One of his most often quoted lines came from a 2004 review: "A city is never more fully human than when expertise – our own or someone else's – allows us access to ebullience, lightness and delight." He spent a number of columns criticizing the new master plan for the World Trade Center site, calling the plan produced by Daniel Libeskind an embodiment of the "Orwellian condition America's detractors accuse us of embracing: perpetual war for perpetual peace."
He stepped down as the architecture critic of The New York Times in 2004 to write the "Icons" column for the Times' T Style Magazine, among other features. He was replaced by his protégé, Nicolai Ouroussoff. Muschamp was openly gay, and the centrality of gay men in the cultural life of New York City was central to his writing. He continued to write until his death from lung cancer in Manhattan in 2007.
A book collection of Muschamp's writings, Hearts of the City: The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2010.
JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
José Juan Barba (1964) architect from ETSA Madrid in 1991. Special Mention in the National Finishing University Education Awards 1991. PhD in Architecture ETSAM, 2004. He founded his professional practice in Madrid in 1992 (www.josejuanbarba.com). He is an architecture critic and editor-in-chief of METALOCUS magazine since 1999, and he was advising different NGOs until 1997. He has been a lecturer (in Design, Theory and Criticism, and Urban planning) and guest lecturer at different national and international universities (Roma TRE, Polytechnic Milan, ETSA Madrid, ETSA Barcelona, UNAM Mexico, Univ. Iberoamericana Mexico, University of Thessaly Volos, FA de Montevideo, Washington, Medellin, IE School, U.Alicante, Univ. Europea Madrid, UCJC Madrid, ESARQ-U.I.C. Barcelona,...).
Maître de Conférences IUG-UPMF Grenoble 2013-14. Full assistant Professor, since 2003 up to now at the University of Alcalá School of Architecture, Madrid, Spain. And Jury in competitions as Quaderns editorial magazine (2011), Mies van der Rohe Awards, (2010-2022), Europan13 (2015). He has been invited to participate in the Biennale di Venezia 2016 as part "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione".
He has published several books, the last in 2016, "#positions" and in 2015 "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi " and collaborations on "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione", "La Mansana de la discordia" (2015), "Arquitectura Contemporánea de Japón: Nuevos territorios" (2015)...
Awards.-
- Award. RENOVATION OF SEGURA RIVER ENVIRONMENT, Murcia, Sapin, 2010.
- First Prize, RENOVATION GRAN VÍA, “Delirious Gran Vía”, Madrid, Spain, 2010.
- First Prize, “PANAYIOTI MIXELI Award”. SADAS-PEA, for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture Athens, 2005.
- First Prize, “SANTIAGO AMÓN Award," for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture. 2000.
- Award, “PIERRE VAGO Award." ICAC -International committee of Art Critics. London, 2005.
- First Prize, C.O.A.M. Madrid, 2000. Shortlisted, World Architecture Festival. Centro de Investigación e Interpretación de los Ríos. Tera, Esla y Orbigo, Barcelona, 2008.
- First Prize. FAD AWARD 07 Ephemeral Interventions. “M.C.ESCHER”. Arquin-Fad. Barcelona, Sapin 2007.
