Im doing some work on  Mies Van der Rohe and how he interpreted glass
as a building  material in the buildings “Farnsworth House” and
“Tugendhat House” in terms of light and relationship to landscape. I
found some info on the actual building but i need some info on his
thoughts and reasons behind his use of glass.

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Request for Question Clarification by chromedome-ga on 07 Oct 2003 22:37 PDT

Hi, fto:

Are you looking for references specifically to these two structures? 
Or would any quotes/references detailing Mies' thoughts on the use of
glass be suitable?  It may be that there are no quotes readily
available in English which pertain to these two specific buildings.

-Regards, 

Chromedome

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Clarification of Question by fto-ga on 08 Oct 2003 04:12 PDT

Any quotes on his view on glass and why he chose it as a building
material should be enough to get me started. If you could find some
reference to either one of these buildings and the way he used glass
in terms of light and relationship to landscape would be greatly
appreciated.

Any description of the use of glass in either of the buildings would
be fine to begin with.

thanx

---

Clarification of Question by fto-ga on 11 Oct 2003 19:53 PDT

Hi,  
 
thats exactly what i needed to begin with, thanx. One of the sites u
listed was
http://wwwusers.brookes.ac.uk/01253550/My%20Web%20page1.htm 
 
and it had this paragraph. This is exactly what i need, in relation to
landscape and its relationships with light. I just need a description
like this one in more detail and i should be fine.
 
The founder of this style of architecture; Mies van der Rhoe, showed
this in his designs, structures such Farnsworth House, Tugenendhat
Building and finally his German Pavillion in Barcelona. All opened up
to allow natural ventilation but also allowed the building to cohabit
the space with its surroundings, encompassing the landscape’s symmetry
through the use of literal transparency. As Robin Evans wrote; “Mies
deliberately placed his building on the axis sliding it in between two
existing elements of symmetrical symmetry”, thus allowing the building
to become a continuation of the landscape. The use of water in a
design can present a building that is an extension of the existing
landscape, allowing a parallel to be drawn through its reflection.

Here's a start...

"Nature should also have a life of its own. We should avoid disturbing
it with excessive color of our houses and our interior furnishings.
Indeed, we should strive to bring Nature, houses, and people together
into a higher unity. When one looks at nature through the glass walls
of the Farnsworth House it takes on a deeper significance than when
one stands outside. More of Nature is thus expressed--it becomes part
of a greater whole." ~Mies Van Der Rohe (1958)
http://architecture.mit.edu/~carrieb/information.html

"In 1946, Mies met Herbert Greenwald, a builder and real estate
developer. Together, they would raise three high-rise apartment
buildings. These were to be Mies’s first realized high-rise structure.
Here, Mies expanded his idea of the "glass wall," as previously seen
in the German Pavilion. Mies’s vision of the steel and glass frame
offered a previously unknown visual experience, because in his
version, there are no limits to space as seen from the inside of the
apartment. The walls of the apartment buildings would be entirely
glass, from floor to ceiling, interrupted only by steel or concrete
beams for support, so that the occupants would feel liberated and
detached from the earth."
http://www.artviews.org/chen.htm

"From Scheerbart's belief that "The new, transparent glass environment
will completely transform mankind," to Mies van der Rohe's nearly
all-glass Farnsworth House of 1950, transparency has been seen as
something desirable, even magical in its transformative power.  Its
benefits would not only be physical, but mental and social too:
transparent architecture would promote new habits of living founded on
an openness and honesty which were nothing less than the new
conditions of a socially and culturally progressive society at ease
with itself."
http://www.aah.org.uk/confs/2001aah/2001s18.html

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/GATEWAY/FARNSWTH/neumeyer.html
http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/arts_2003.asp
http://www.farnsworthhousefriends.org/links.html
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:NchtcGbR0hEJ:www.geocities.com/cindy_shb/4.doc+%22mies%22+%22glass+environment%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1001/rev/rev01.html
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n02/camp01_.html
http://wwwusers.brookes.ac.uk/01253550/My%20Web%20page1.htm
http://www.zamilglass.com/dreamofglasshouse.htm
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/H._Lange_House.html
http://www.archi.fr/MIQCP/english/g5gb.pdf

Hi, 

thats exactly what i needed to begin with, thanx. One of the sites u
listed was
http://wwwusers.brookes.ac.uk/01253550/My%20Web%20page1.htm

and it had this paragraph. This is exactly what i need, in relation to
landscape and its relationships with light. I just need a description
like this one in more detail and i should be fine.

The founder of this style of architecture; Mies van der Rhoe, showed
this in his designs, structures such Farnsworth House, Tugenendhat
Building and finally his German Pavillion in Barcelona. All opened up
to allow natural ventilation but also allowed the building to cohabit
the space with its surroundings, encompassing the landscape’s symmetry
through the use of literal transparency. As Robin Evans wrote; “Mies
deliberately placed his building on the axis sliding it in between two
existing elements of symmetrical symmetry”, thus allowing the building
to become a continuation of the landscape. The use of water in a
design can present a building that is an extension of the existing
landscape, allowing a parallel to be drawn through its reflection.