Mies /

Once criticized as "the destroyer of familiar traditions and the architect of cold technology and faceless bureaucracy," the building art of Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) is in fact "complicit and resistant, classical and modern, ordinary and extraordinary," as the late scholar Mertins (1954-2011) observes in this searching, erudite monograph. Mertins (Modernity Unbound) illustrates-with majestic examinations of such designs as the Barcelona Pavilion, the Reichsbank project, 860-880 Lake Shore Drie, and the Seagram Building-how van der Rohe's architecture resonates with tensions and binaries that embody but don't resolve the problems of modernity. Most extraordinary is the way Mertins unpacks the complex cultural and philosophical contexts that van der Rohe was steeped in throughout his 60-year career: drawing extensively on the self-educated architect's library, the author contextualizes the thought of Rudolf Schwarz, Romano Guardini, Max Scheler, and other thinkers whose works nourished the architect. The result is a fascinating survey of the architect's intellectual concerns: questions of the body and soul, technology and nature, and the individual and the community. Complemented by over 700 photographs, sketches, and architectural plans, this text ranks highly in the Mies van der Rohe corpus. 375 color and 375 b&w illus. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

With 849 title entries on "Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig-1886-1969" in WorldCat, the union catalog of 72,000 libraries, do we need another book on the master of universal space, heir to the Platonic ideal, and pursuer of the perfectly understated environment? For those interested in the intellectual context of the work-in Mies as philosopher-architect-the answer is "yes." Tracing a chronological arc, Mies, with its suitably terse title, is divided into five chapters highlighting his development as seen in the Riehl country house, the visionary glass skyscrapers of the 1920s, the Barcelona Pavilion, the campus for the Illinois Institute of Technology, and such high-rise buildings as 860-880 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. Both storyteller and documentarian, the late Mertins (Univ. of Pennsylvania; Modernity Unbound) can in one paragraph adroitly describe a building with exceptional accuracy-he visited each of the architect's extant projects-and in the next relate it to Vitruvian and Gothic Revival traditions, Walter Benjamin's concept of mimesis, or plant growth. Unfortunately, the book's two-column design results in handsome white space but overly small illustrations (all black and white), and dense, undersize -typography. VERDICT Written at a level that serves graduate students and faculty, this title is essential only for comprehensive architecture collections.-Paul Glassman, Felician Coll. Lib., Lodi, NJ (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.