Mies first

>> Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's American dreams come to life at the CCA

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

When German architect and final Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe moved from Berlin to Chicago in 1938, he managed to whittle his collection of 3,000 books down to the most essential 300 titles, out of necessity for lack of space--admitting that these were the only ones he needed anyway. Such a funnelling of influences from art, philosophy, science and psychology--a reduction to the very essential--was for Mies, a way of life.

Fresh from a stint at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Mies in America, an exploration of Mies' relationship with American technology and his effect on the architectural landscape of North America, is now on at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Curated by Phyllis Lambert, architect and founding director of the CCA, the exhibit is a satisfyingly succinct and touching portrait of the man and his work. Lambert actually commissioned Mies to create perhaps his most famous work of all in 1954, a building that caused a sensation and sparked a skyscraping transformation of New York City's skyline: the Seagram building.

The exhibit begins with personal touches, like a selection of Mies' books and paintings from his collection of works by friends of his at the forefront the European avant-garde of the '20s, notably Paul Klee, Vasily Kandinsky and Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. Alongside the photos and sketches by Mies and his colleagues, are models of his most important buildings: the Resor House in Wyoming, Chicago's Convention Hall, the Seagram Building and Berlin's New National Gallery. The show is split into four phases, tracing the evolution of what Lambert calls Mies' practice of "the difficult art of the simple."

The first phase shows Mies' arrival in Chicago and the development of the Resor House and the Armour Institute of Technology. Next comes the realization of the glass-encased, steel-framed highrises he had conceived of in the '20s in Berlin. Thirdly, in the '50s came the continuing perfection of said glass structures, followed in the '60s by important urban commissions like Montreal's Westmount Square and what is perceived as the pièce de résistance of Mies' career: his final project, the New National Gallery in Berlin. This building is considered to be the essence and culmination of Mies' work: the exploration of the numinous implications of freeing up space.

Artist Inigo Manglano-Ovalle's videos featuring Mies' projects at different times of day offer quiet testaments to the stark beauty and power of his trademark glass towers, illustrating a little something Mies himself might have put best, in 1930: "What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies in between things."

Mies in America is at the CCA until Jan 20