Boxing Mies
Greek temples and Roman basilicas were creations of an entire epoch, rather than works of an individual architect.
Some two thousand years later the reverse is standard. The utopian path of the past was surrounded by mistakes and misery as a false light illuminated the mirage, the shimmering fate morgana, provoked once again by a blinding sun. This illustration was physical, not planetary and it searched ideal conditions for an architecture to reflect its era. The fata morgana materialized itself in steel and glass, not the physical matter of a mere monolith. The Greeks and Romans built myths the same way they fabricated architecture. An architecture of stone, with load bearing walls that was disciplined and ordered. Hierarchy was dominate and symmetry was demanded. This architecture could be repeated, rescaled, reorganized, as if to shuffle cards of a deck. Could this architecture be displayed, revealed and exposed per the times it concealed? Each ruler and emperor was in constant danger of losing control of both their power and their people. The architecture was a counterfeit masque, one which appeared meaningful, but projected an uncalm behind which was a dormant potential, awaiting a spring of rebirth.
The year is 1968, and Mies van der Rohe, a year before his death, returns to the homeland of his childhood years. This childhood and youth are spent with a father who’s masonry profession will have an everlasting effect. The return to the homeland involves the construction of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, but typologically the program of the building was a temple. History reveals a structure built from glass and steel, lightweight and massive, transparent yet filled with darkness. Mies’s masonry past was rejected, or exchanged for materials of the times? The building thoughtful organization, plinth, columns and roof were elements of the Greeks and Romans. An overturn of materials substance transformed and assembled into a new narrative. A modern building and myth, or an act of radical preservation, superimposing past and present in a face to face confrontation.
This conflict between ancient and modern is like that seen so often in a boxing arena. The players both strong in physique and well trained for their purpose, but only one can win the match.
Boxing is eloquent in its dancing forms, but mereiless in the finality. The champion shines in their achievements of victory, only extinguished in mere moments. As time passes, the achievements of the boxer swell in magnitude, but truly only move farther away, a distance ever expanding. Many erase the boxer and replace them with whichever current trend is most accepted. The student of the sport witnesses an ongoing evolution, continuously repeating itself as the rules and dimensions remain the constant in perpetuity. Each champion is compared to one another, but the myths of the prowess are constructed outside the ring in memories and fragments of misremembered heroic events.
Boxing parallels architecture simultaneously in personal postures, proportions and within geometries. The architect stands alone striking an epoch timeless and unbeatable. The architect has a choice, a decision to ponder, continue the ongoing battle, or inwardly resolve the conflict via the referee of history. Understanding a period, a style of architecture that allows the architect the ability to rewrite history and be disguised as personal intuitions. A more interesting position is revealed in the direct confrontation of the past and present epochs. This contest, impossible in the boxing arena is untimed and limitless, as an architectural mirroring appears unfocused at first glance, but upon exposure, characteristics are frighteningly similar.
As the Neue Nationalgalerie was constructed, Mies has an ever repeating contemplation, one which is unnerving daily. Mies recalls his youthful travels to witness the classical architecture of Greece and Italy. Within this rumination, Mies recollects almost four decades earlier, when needing inspiration for the furnishing of the Barcelona Pavilion. His vision is of Ancient Rome and the curule seat, a symbol of political power, carried over to many civilizations, utilized by royalty. This Roman artifact, his muse, linked to another time, is literally projected into the 20th Century, proving that the furnishings of the pavilion are not of his creation. Mies struggles with this truth, and the fact that the veil of his career can easily lifted via a history lesson.
During his stay in Berlin, this truth is reinforced as he witnesses the raising of the massive Neue Nationalgalerie roof, jacked to its measured height. As a spectator of this event, his temple is nearing completion. The roof is an act against the forces of gravity, supported only by eight columns, yet spanning over one hundred meters. This event spurs what is believed to be a hallucination, one which he shares with no others, as he fears the repercussions per his advanced age. The illusion is one in which Apollo, the son of Zeus, is inside the Neue Nationalgalerie surrounded by buildings of Ancient Rome. How could this be? The Temple of Saturn and the Pantheon along with arches and columns of many orders are all under the protection of the Neue Nationalgalerie’s singular roof. Is this a vision, or a wish of his subconscious? Mies was sparring with himself in a ring of his own construction per what he believes to be reality. As the success of his career accumulated, he began to forget purposefully in order to erase all these precedents. Apollo, the God of Music, acts as his singing guide throughout the Neue Nationalgalerie, and it seemingly stone exhibited artifacts. The conversation between Apollo and Mies is one sided. The God of Music, through song, instructs Mies how to atone for his spatial transgressions. The offense by Mies is two fold. Firstly, the allotment of looted precedents would be publicly displayed in direct comparison to all his designed projects inside his newly constructed temple. The second wrongdoing was far more severe. Mies’s work had also set its own precedent for a generation of architecture students both professionally and academically. His work, blindly copied by so many, had become an architectural style unto itself, the signature of which was forged. Mies, in this last stage of his life, would have to renounce the decades old curriculum that he has meticulously assembled at the Illinois Institute of Technology. By resolving these crimes of architecture, Mies would be pardoned and a unforeseen model of education could evolve. An educational model, which driven by analysis through history could expose the weakness of any so-called architectural style.
Any well trained boxer knows when they should have had their last bout. Remaining in the arena, the ring, etc. too long only dilutes the brightness of one’s dedication to their profession. Shining as a comet does, maybe once in a century, only reminds students of any sport that antiquity repeats itself, and in doing so the idea of an original is forever lost.
Greek temples and Roman basilicas were creations of an entire epoch, rather than works of an individual architect.
Some two thousand years later the reverse is standard. The utopian path of the past was surrounded by mistakes and misery as a false light illuminated the mirage, the shimmering fate morgana, provoked once again by a blinding sun. This illustration was physical, not planetary and it searched ideal conditions for an architecture to reflect its era. The fata morgana materialized itself in steel and glass, not the physical matter of a mere monolith. The Greeks and Romans built myths the same way they fabricated architecture. An architecture of stone, with load bearing walls that was disciplined and ordered. Hierarchy was dominate and symmetry was demanded. This architecture could be repeated, rescaled, reorganized, as if to shuffle cards of a deck. Could this architecture be displayed, revealed and exposed per the times it concealed? Each ruler and emperor was in constant danger of losing control of both their power and their people. The architecture was a counterfeit masque, one which appeared meaningful, but projected an uncalm behind which was a dormant potential, awaiting a spring of rebirth.
The year is 1968, and Mies van der Rohe, a year before his death, returns to the homeland of his childhood years. This childhood and youth are spent with a father who’s masonry profession will have an everlasting effect. The return to the homeland involves the construction of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, but typologically the program of the building was a temple. History reveals a structure built from glass and steel, lightweight and massive, transparent yet filled with darkness. Mies’s masonry past was rejected, or exchanged for materials of the times? The building thoughtful organization, plinth, columns and roof were elements of the Greeks and Romans. An overturn of materials substance transformed and assembled into a new narrative. A modern building and myth, or an act of radical preservation, superimposing past and present in a face to face confrontation.
This conflict between ancient and modern is like that seen so often in a boxing arena. The players both strong in physique and well trained for their purpose, but only one can win the match.
Boxing is eloquent in its dancing forms, but mereiless in the finality. The champion shines in their achievements of victory, only extinguished in mere moments. As time passes, the achievements of the boxer swell in magnitude, but truly only move farther away, a distance ever expanding. Many erase the boxer and replace them with whichever current trend is most accepted. The student of the sport witnesses an ongoing evolution, continuously repeating itself as the rules and dimensions remain the constant in perpetuity. Each champion is compared to one another, but the myths of the prowess are constructed outside the ring in memories and fragments of misremembered heroic events.
Boxing parallels architecture simultaneously in personal postures, proportions and within geometries. The architect stands alone striking an epoch timeless and unbeatable. The architect has a choice, a decision to ponder, continue the ongoing battle, or inwardly resolve the conflict via the referee of history. Understanding a period, a style of architecture that allows the architect the ability to rewrite history and be disguised as personal intuitions. A more interesting position is revealed in the direct confrontation of the past and present epochs. This contest, impossible in the boxing arena is untimed and limitless, as an architectural mirroring appears unfocused at first glance, but upon exposure, characteristics are frighteningly similar.
As the Neue Nationalgalerie was constructed, Mies has an ever repeating contemplation, one which is unnerving daily. Mies recalls his youthful travels to witness the classical architecture of Greece and Italy. Within this rumination, Mies recollects almost four decades earlier, when needing inspiration for the furnishing of the Barcelona Pavilion. His vision is of Ancient Rome and the curule seat, a symbol of political power, carried over to many civilizations, utilized by royalty. This Roman artifact, his muse, linked to another time, is literally projected into the 20th Century, proving that the furnishings of the pavilion are not of his creation. Mies struggles with this truth, and the fact that the veil of his career can easily lifted via a history lesson.
During his stay in Berlin, this truth is reinforced as he witnesses the raising of the massive Neue Nationalgalerie roof, jacked to its measured height. As a spectator of this event, his temple is nearing completion. The roof is an act against the forces of gravity, supported only by eight columns, yet spanning over one hundred meters. This event spurs what is believed to be a hallucination, one which he shares with no others, as he fears the repercussions per his advanced age. The illusion is one in which Apollo, the son of Zeus, is inside the Neue Nationalgalerie surrounded by buildings of Ancient Rome. How could this be? The Temple of Saturn and the Pantheon along with arches and columns of many orders are all under the protection of the Neue Nationalgalerie’s singular roof. Is this a vision, or a wish of his subconscious? Mies was sparring with himself in a ring of his own construction per what he believes to be reality. As the success of his career accumulated, he began to forget purposefully in order to erase all these precedents. Apollo, the God of Music, acts as his singing guide throughout the Neue Nationalgalerie, and it seemingly stone exhibited artifacts. The conversation between Apollo and Mies is one sided. The God of Music, through song, instructs Mies how to atone for his spatial transgressions. The offense by Mies is two fold. Firstly, the allotment of looted precedents would be publicly displayed in direct comparison to all his designed projects inside his newly constructed temple. The second wrongdoing was far more severe. Mies’s work had also set its own precedent for a generation of architecture students both professionally and academically. His work, blindly copied by so many, had become an architectural style unto itself, the signature of which was forged. Mies, in this last stage of his life, would have to renounce the decades old curriculum that he has meticulously assembled at the Illinois Institute of Technology. By resolving these crimes of architecture, Mies would be pardoned and a unforeseen model of education could evolve. An educational model, which driven by analysis through history could expose the weakness of any so-called architectural style.
Any well trained boxer knows when they should have had their last bout. Remaining in the arena, the ring, etc. too long only dilutes the brightness of one’s dedication to their profession. Shining as a comet does, maybe once in a century, only reminds students of any sport that antiquity repeats itself, and in doing so the idea of an original is forever lost.
Location: New York, NY
Surjan - design scientist
S. H. F. Surjan - project architect
Luca Surjan - creative director
Surjan - design scientist
S. H. F. Surjan - project architect
Luca Surjan - creative director