Sunday 12 August 2012

Mies and Frank


Isn't that just bloody marvelous. The Gericke house (1932) was on two levels like the Tugendhart House, so I think you came down to the main level via the spiral stair. The Robie House entrance is also to the rear, but more conventionally on to the ground floor. Other than that, the relation of these pictures tells a thousand words. By spotting the grand piano bottom left, you appreciate the huge scale and glass walled nature of the Gericke living space, while Wright is still punching holes in walls.
Corbusier understood architecture in terms of boxes, very good boxes, very handy boxes, but both Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies understand it rather more inconveniently as planes, in FLW's case, plains. The Gericke house was to be stuck on the banks of the Wannsee outside Berlin, and we should note that all the inconvenient stuff of living, that occupied by servants and children, gets put in to boxes, leaving your haute bourgeois to roam around inside to out unencumbered by walls. Note they share the same plinth on the long axis. I shall recline for the rest of the day.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Paul
    Tripped over your site which Google led me to via your earlier Keith Richards comment. Are you in recovery? You can Google artist Henry Bogle to see mt artwork. My email is hcbogle@gmail.com

    Best, Henry

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