Much has been written about the work and thought of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but perhaps less attention has been paid to one of the most important aspects of his way of thinking and designing, namely the relationship between architecture and the city.
The volume Mies Van Der Rohe. The Architecture of the City Theory and Architecture aims to fill this gap, gathering the contributions of many international scholars and researchers who, fifty years after the death of the master from Aachen (1886-1969), have tried to confront his extraordinary capacity to think and build the places of the contemporary city.
In fact, Mies’ projects can all be read and interpreted as a meditated and clear reflection on the relationships to be established with urban features, with the specific conditions of the context, and with the elements of nature, always considered as a significant part of the project.
In relation to the diversity of scales with which Mies confronts the city – from the compact structure typical of the historic European city to the open structure of the American experience – his projects can be understood both as architectures capable of weaving close relationships with the consolidated context, and as prefigurations of a different idea of the city realised in the American experience in close collaboration with Ludwig Hilberseimer.
Starting from the central architectural and urban theoretical themes, the book articulates the contributions through various topics (the idea of the city, construction, teaching, public buildings, the house, representation) from which emerges the complexity and richness of a design-thinking that finds in the historical experience and in the adherence to reality its extraordinary actuality.
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