Louis Kahn and Mies
Van der Rohe were considered two of the greatest architects during the early
1900’s. They both had many similarities in relation to their designs, yet they
were both unique in their own ways. To begin, Mies Van der Rohe, born in 1886, was
commonly regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture. He,
like many of the architects of his time, was striving to establish a new style
of architecture to properly represent the modern times. He accomplished this by
the simplest and clearest geometries, forms, and concepts. Much like Semper,
Mies was very logically driven in his forms yet desired to represent the articulation
of the building in response to the fluidity of life. He was a rationalist in
the way he used repeatable forms and created interplay between columns and
walls. In relation to his floor plans, he strongly desired to abolish allowing
rooms creating the organization. In addition to this, Mies also wanted to abolish
the center of the house.
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| Tugendhat House |
As is seen in the
floor plans of the Tugendhat House (1930), there is no single point or room that
can be seen or labeled as the center of the house. All the rooms are scattered
throughout the plan without the sense of single axis or grid to arrange and
organize the spaces. Though there is a distinct curved wall which forms a dining
room in the center of the house (middle plan), the views are cut off by the
walls which gives the feeling of a small, unimportant space. Once in this
space, your view is distracted by the largeness of the east room adjacent to
the dining space which seems to be the main living area of the house which is
in fact not in the center of the house. This is also seen in many of his
housing designs.
Moving on, Louis
Kahn, born in 1901, was mainly known for combining Modernism with the weight
and dignity of ancient monuments and monumental masses. The Exeter Library, for
example, was created for the Phillips Exeter Academy and designed to become the
monument of the Academy. Climbing to the top of the stairs and approaching the
entrance to the building, one can easily understand the layout of the
structure. This was seen as a major importance to Kahn. As is seen in the floor
plans (ground floor – left; 2nd floor – right), he desired that
people be able to move at ease. This was accomplished by having an open floor
plan in addition to a completely symmetrical form for easy understanding of
location within. Unlike Mies, the spaces Kahn designed were to be easily
understood when standing at any given point on the plan, instead of designing
so that the experience of the spaces differs from room to room.
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| 1st Floor |
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| 2nd Floor |
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