Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was born in German and later became one of the famous architects and is considered as the pioneering master of the modern architectures. He is renowned for the development and popularization of the new architectural styles throughout the US. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was commissioned to construct Minerals and Metals Building. In the process of building the design for Minerals and Metals Building, he was asked to reflect the core national values of the US among them including modernity, openness, and even liberty. In the Modern Movement, Mies is associated with primary innovative concepts 1 . Mies is considered as an architect that primarily pushed the notions is flowing interiors to its limits while at the same time paving a way to the modern space’s conceptualization. Minerals and Metals Building is outstanding as one of the most inspiring cases as a result of the innovative design that was utilized in building it including temporality and permanence, architectural space, and body in addition to architectural product’s transformation into an open-ended transitive object 2 . In understanding Mies Van Der Rohe’s architecture and corporeality of architectural space, the paper will focus on the Minerals and Metals Building.
Minerals and Metals Building
Formerly, known as the Armour Research Foundation (ARF) Metals Building, Minerals, and Metals Building apparently marked one of the critical steps towards the ultimate accomplishment of Mies' master plan for Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Minerals and Metals Building was not only the first ever construction that was designed by Mies for the IIT but was one of his fist building in America. The building was later dedicated in the year 1943 and was considered as being unique since it was accomplished during the WWII. Little had already been built particularly with the use of the steels to conserve the metal for the war.
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Space of time: spatiotemporality and multiplicity
Through combining both the scientific and the intellectual accumulation of the previous years, early year of the 20th century has been most appealing with the rise of the Modern Movement due to technological development and has carried out unique research on the architectural space. The massive transformation progress’ proportion within the architectural space has been connected to the theoretical analysis of human view of time 3 . The late 19th century was a vital breakpoint within the processes of transformation as a result of the rising of notions of multiplicity, space-time, duration and even temporality ( containing the features of linear progression of the past, present, and future) within the discourse of architecture. Additionally, it was further considered as the long-term impact of the Baroque Era’s intellectual inheritance which brought about the concepts of change and difference that further stimulated the notions of temporality 4 . The invention of the optical apparatus in addition to the developing theories was also considered as efficient when it came to invoking the idea of multiplicity through altering both conditions and the point of view which was believed to have significantly impacted the theories of relativity and constitution of space.
Temporality together with the infinite possibilities influences our perceptions of the world through shifting it from what is considered as the ideal one to a possible many and placing time-space-body uniformity at the architectural spatiality center. Space might no longer be perceived as the simply static enclosure of the entity of a similar relation instead as (spatiotemporality) having both the temporal and spatial qualities which is a form of structure which seems to enfold various multiplicities within itself. Space is no longer considered as a slowed down state of time instead it has become a multidimensional extension.
Transfigured Body: Being and Reflection of Becoming Images
The separation of incorporeal and corporeal was apparently founded on the Antic era, and this was related to the stoic body (characterized by stillness and firmness) 5 . The stoical principle, in this case, was used to appraise the potential segregation between the virtual and the actual body impacts and at the same time appreciated the matter qualities and the notion of consistency of the stoical body while at the same time disassociating it from an event. Research has shown that the physical body existence was primarily perceived as a fragment of reality which seemed to be all that existed and further, each was self-initiated; its dynamics had an inner force which related to the entirety at the form’s level 6 .
The stoical principle also was useful in addressing the notion of incorporeal and focused on the effective presence that could have existed without a potential physical matter. For example, in the rest of the structures, the columns are not visible from outside rather a viewer will see a glass wall atop a brick base. Therefore, it becomes apparent that the image of a body tends to diverge from being perfect, centralized and even surrounded by space. It will thus be situated into a specific frame that is believed to be peripheral and mobile because there is no center at all. When focusing on the concept of fold by Deleuze, it becomes clear that a body will emerge as being a mobile and transformable object that exists through the following stages folding, unfolding and refolding at a given time 7 . Besides being a hierarchically constituted system, it emerges as rhizomatic structures ( expanding horizontally as opposed to vertically) with dynamic assemblages which implies that it was created on a specific substrate consisting of three-dimensional elements that projects out of the substrate. Today, it is not the being’s image or how it ought to be somewhat the reflection of the probable becoming which in this case is virtual. The architecture is therefore concerned with the issue of the reality of the virtual and determines whether the absence condition might be achieved in architecture.
Constructing the Corporeal Architecture
Deterritorialization and Points of Inflection
The architecture’s incorporeality in the Minerals and Metals Building seem to stem from the usage of two distinct designs principles employed in building. The spatiality’s configuration in addition to the material deployment arguably emerges as one of the most critical points in the intangibility of architectures 8 . The freestanding of its walls was particularly designed in brick and glass and then inserted in the frames thus bringing out primacy of its structure. Going through various rounds of sketches, Mies was able to come up with a Herculean effort that would be able to adapt to future building conditions in the US effectively. Despite the fact that Minerals and Metals Building is virtually reminiscent, suggesting something by resemblance of the, Bauhaus in Dessau, its structural premise is evidently different. Research has further shown that it was through this that we could see for the first time Mies’ use of the rolled-steel I-beam as the greater part of the structural grammar.
The utilization of the frame structures in the construction techniques of the Minerals and Metals Building can be argued to have apparently bestowed the concept of freedom when developing an innovative spatial configuration of space that is continuous in addition to maintaining the lightness of the structure. For instance, he constructed the whole frames of the building, horizontal and vertical members, of a wide-flange beams and mullions. Consequently, the inside-outside flow relations together with the visual continuity are constituted through the provision of a penetration of closed and open spaces 9 . When the surface becomes panels, the stillness perceptive blocks of a conventional and closed spatial relation becomes invalid. With regards to discarding the dissolving borders, formal spatial relation, in addition to going beyond existing limits through simplifying the structure, the aspect of space does not exist anymore as a rigid territory instead as a territorial temporality such that the existence of ephemeral emerges as an essential feature of the space.
Additionally, the planes have been shown to be critical in the space creation while relating to the purpose of constructing the mechanism that would ultimately suggest a virtual spatiality depth. The concept of inflection apparently points to the maximization of the perspective relation of spatiality through multiplication of the viewpoints and to open up the spatiality into a causality of every event 10 . The intersecting corners of the Minerals and Metals in the sectional relation or even planar that constitutes such points of reflection multiplies temporal relationship with a primary aim of achieving greatest spatiality via space’s interrelations. Critiques have further declared Minerals and Metals Building as the homage to Theo van Doesburg or Piet Mondrian in addition to the tenets of de Stijl.
Dematerialization, Multiplicity, Image and the Virtualization
The concept of the proliferation ( rapid increase in the number) of the viewpoint in the Minerals and Metals Building is primarily related to the creation of the temporal condition of truth fundamentally regarding strengthening what has been termed as the spatiotemporal continuity (having both the temporal and spatial qualities) 11 . However, it also significantly correlated with the notion of image construction which is also appraised as an essential principle of design that has carried out through Minerals and Metals through the deployment of the innovative utilization of materiality. The architecture seemingly enables interplay between reflection and transparent via the architectural skin. Additionally, it also dematerializes (the idea where a structure is no longer material ) all the inorganic embodiment of Minerals and Metals Building together with the organic body of the experiencer while transforming them into enfolding various existence levels. Minerals and Metals’ corporal existence is particularly dematerialized through the use of floating surfaces and transparency and at the same time, the corporeality of experience seems to be lost in the reflection.
Unconventional and innovative use of conventional material to conduct a particular interplay between transparency and reflection is ultimately the originality and the innovation of design together with architect’s success 12 . Additionally, such an ambiguity manipulates both reflected and real and exterior and interiors’ relations. Difference between surfaces that are effectively shaped geometrically and the visual multiplicities persistent is reflected via a glossy surface that creates a highly innovative confrontation of the intangible and tangible bodies together with spaces that significantly contributes to the incorporeal actualization of Minerals and Metals.
Minerals and Metals Building is evidently mapped as one of the most distinguished examples of transitioning from materiality to the dematerialized existence 13 . This is arguably one of unique embodiments for the penetration of bodies while at the same time appreciates the correlations of images and ambiguity in addition to interdependence via both the multiplicity and the temporality, critical to the body’s temporal existence. Being one of Mies’ American constructions, Minerals, and Metals Building mirrors the transition by Mies from the forms that were considered to be so dear to his heart when he was working in Europe into innovative designs that were evidently probable, important and necessary.
Minerals and Metals Building exists through what has been considered to be the interplay between image and figure in addition to their dematerialization process via projections, reflections, and surveillance. Minerals and Metals Building boldly has been shown to also undermine the existence inquiry with regards to the incorporeal and corporal relations. As the inflection points constitute multiplicity, studies have shown that the discrete of both continuous multiplicities of both space and time becomes significantly temporal, layered extension, fluid and even proliferated. Through the spatiality’s configuration with the incorporeal components of an over-layered image and intertwining tangible surfaces with reflections, the idea of the space dramatically detaches from concrete and tangible.
An aspect of unconventionality considered as architectural skin seems to emerge as part contamination surface that apparently links incorporeal existence from corporality while marking existential transformations as part of the design’s innovation. Many years later after the war, Minerals and Metals Building has continued to serve numerous purposes which range from the research lab to the lecture hall. In the recent times, Minerals and Metals Building is a unique model shop used in the architecture’s department of ITT, and it has further been rumored that the building is the largest model shop in the country. Its interior in the modern-day resembles the machinery-filled space that is believed to have been originally designed.
Bibliography
Buchanan, Ian, and Gregg Lambert, eds. Deleuze and space . University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation . U of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Deleuze, Gilles. The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque . U of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Graafland, Ad. Architectural bodies . Vol. 1. 010 Publishers, 1996.
Healy, P. "The stoical body'." The body in architecture, Rotterdam 10 (2006). 115-129.
Stierli, Martino. "Mies Montage." AA Files 61 (2010): 54-72.
Vidler, Anthony. "The BBB-Body: Block, Blob, Blur." The Body in Architecture. Rotterdam 10 (2006): 130-37.
1 Buchanan, Ian, and Gregg Lambert, eds. Deleuze and space . University of Toronto Press, 2005.
2 Graafland, Ad. Architectural bodies . Vol. 1. 010 Publishers, 1996.
3 Deleuze, Gilles. The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque . U of Minnesota Press, 1993.
4 Deleuze, Gilles, and Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation . U of Minnesota Press, 2003.
5 Stierli, Martino. "Mies Montage." AA Files 61 (2010): 54-72.
6 Deleuze, Gilles. The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque . U of Minnesota Press, 1993.
7 Buchanan, Ian, and Gregg Lambert, eds. Deleuze and space . University of Toronto Press, 2005.
8 Vidler, Anthony. "The BBB-Body: Block, Blob, Blur." The Body in Architecture. Rotterdam 10 (2006): 130-37.
9 Healy, P. "The stoical body'." The body in architecture, Rotterdam 10 (2006). 115-129.
10 Deleuze, Gilles, and Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation . U of Minnesota Press, 2003.
11 Graafland, Ad. Architectural bodies . Vol. 1. 010 Publishers, 1996.
12 Healy, P. "The stoical body'." The body in architecture, Rotterdam 10 (2006). (115)
13 Deleuze, Gilles. The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque . U of Minnesota Press, 1993.
