"The third event in Mies's development of the pavilion is his discovery that the pavilion and its podium were intimately related. About 1940 he began to speak of his desire to "define not confine space." This implies that he had now begun to credit the continuity of space - both created by the architect in the building and existing beyond it in its surroundings. This is most clearly manifest in two projects of the 1940's, the Museum for a Small City and the Concert Hall. In the museum the pavilion was studied simultaneously for its relation to the broad podium on which it rested, as well as in regard for the surrounding landscape. In many of these studies Mies adopts the valley that was present in the Resor House project. However in distinction with the earlier pavilion projects, where the pavilion was carefully bounded by the podium, now the pavilion is considered in many relations to the podium. Further, most of Mies's actual buildings of about 1930 responded to surrounding landscape in ordered and hierarchical ways. Now, in these projects, as well as in several others around this time, Mies began to respond to the indeterminacy of unbounded environments. At student parties around this time Mies would often be found gazing at Lake Michigan, noting his pleasure in the blue dawn, that condition at dusk or dawn, where water and sky seem unified in the palpability of their blue atmosphere. The phenomenon that sky and water can be seen as one reinforces the interest Mies was developing in problems of defining indeterminate space.'
- bill 8-24-2004 4:07 am





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