turistički procvat zelene istre - DalCasa

Architecture You
Can Seat On
Written by: Sreæko Horvat
Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe found an inspiration
in folding chairs
of Pharaohs and footstool
of Romans of an
X shape. Such shape
corresponded with the
principles of modern
design and the usage
of traditional as well
as modern materials
suited its functional
purpose
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is one of the pioneers of
modern architecture and one of the greatest and
the most influential architects of the 20th century.
The German Pavilion at the Barcelona Exhibition in
1929, Farnsworth House in Illinois in 1950, Seagram Building
in New York in 1958, are only few among many edifices
by which he became famous. Mies van der Rohe
was born in 1886 in Germany where he spent thirty years
of his life, while other thirty years he spent in America. He
became well known by his saying “Less is more”, keeping
up with elegant minimalism and reducing architecture
to the essentials: vertical and horizontal. He used to ironically
call all those unnecessary ornaments “macaroni”
and instead of the word “architecture” Mies preferred
the expression “the art of building”.
Throughout his last years in Germany, before he emigrated
from Europe to USA, flying from Nazi in 1937, Mies van
der Rohe held the position of the director of the famous
Design School, the Bauhaus. Although postmodernists
had changed his famous saying to “Less is – boring”, his
influence, even today 38 years after his death, is equally
strong.
Barcelona states it clearly or, as the Time’s critic Richard
Lacayo says, “classic modern furniture is once again
popular including van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair made
of chrome and leather, produced for that very exposition
in Barcelona in 1929”. Having completed the design
for the German Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Barcelona
commissioned to him by German government,
Mies and his partner Ms. Lilly Reich started to work on the
furniture design for its interior.
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A year after the Exhibition, Mies said about the chair:
“The chair is a very difficult object. Everyone who has
ever tried to make one knows that. There are endless
possibilities and many problems – the chair has to be
light, it has to be strong, it has to be comfortable. It is almost
easier to build a skyscraper than the chair” (1930).
If we recall all those glass skyscrapers which Mies van
der Rohe had built it is hard not to believe him. Mies
found an inspiration in folding chairs of Pharaohs and
footstool of Romans of an X shape. Such shape corresponded
with the principles of modern design and the
usage of traditional as well as modern materials suited
its functional purpose.
In 1950, three years after Lily Reich had passed away, Mies
re-designed the chair by using stainless steel which enabled
that the whole frame could be made from one fluid
piece of metal; that is the chair we know and see today.
The Barcelona chair, also called the Pavilion chair, quickly
became popular as a classic of modernism or a modern
classic, and has remained in production ever since.
But, although philosophically modernists of the mid
20th century including Mies van der Rohe, generally
subscribed to the idea that modern furniture should be
accessible to the masses, both financially and aesthetically,
the Barcelona chair is an exception to this rule.
Materials as well as construction are too costly, and
moreover the labour too intensive (just for the leather it is
required 28 hours of highly skill labour) so that the chair is
too expensive to be in broader usage: its average price
is between $1500 and $3500. There are many producers
of the chair (with or without licence) among which is the