El Convention Hall de Miesconfluencias entre docencia y arquitectura = Mies’s Convention Hall: Convergence of Teaching and Architecture

  1. Garcia-Requejo, Zaida 1
  2. Rodríguez Rodríguez, Pablo 2
  3. Salazar Lozano, María del Pilar 3
  1. 1 Universidade da Coruña, España
  2. 2 Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, España
  3. 3 Universidad de Navarra, España
Journal:
cpa : cuadernos de proyectos arquitectónicos

ISSN: 2174-1131

Year of publication: 2019

Issue Title: Publicación de teoría y crítica

Issue: 9

Pages: 18-27

Type: Article

More publications in: cpa : cuadernos de proyectos arquitectónicos

Abstract

In mid-November 1953, the Chicago Tribune published an article on Mies van der Rohe’s proposal for the city’s new convention center. The following month, Engineering News-Record magazine gave more details on the project, pointing out that Mies had taken Frank Kornacker on board as structural engineer. As his student Peter Carter writes in his book Mies van der Rohe at Work, Mies worked on the project both in his office and with a group of graduate students in his master classes at IIT. Carter quotes lines that appear in the written report of the thesis presented by the three students. Thus, the Convention Hall project was also formalized in a thesis submitted by Yujiro Miwa, Henry Kanazawa, and Pao-Chi Chang in June 1954. However, many biographies and publications dealing with Mies’s work ignores the role played by the students and the structural engineer in its development, and their accounts are sometimes confused. The main objective of this research is to bring to light the work that the students carried out in the classrooms under Mies’s supervision, to analyze the alternatives tested as well as the thesis finally submitted by the students, and to compare it with the original project published by the German, the ultimate purpose being to highlight the relationship between Mies’s teaching activity and his professional practice.

Bibliographic References

  • CARTER, Peter. Mies van der Rohe trabajando. Londres: Phaidon, 2006.
  • ELNIMEIRI, Mahjoub, Goldsmith, Myron y Sharpe, David. “Design and Planning of Tall Buildings at IIT”. EnTall Building Structures: A World View. EEUU: Council of Tall Building and Urban Habitat, 1996.
  • LAMBERT, Phyllis. “Punching through the Clouds: Notes on the Palace of the Toronto- Dominion Centre in the North American Oeuvre of Mies”. En Mertin, Detlef. The Presence of Mies. Nueva York: The Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.
  • MIES VAN DER ROHE, Ludwig. “Proceedings of the 37th Anuual Convention”. Journal of Architectural Education, vol 7 n 1, 1951.
  • MIWA, Yujiro, Kanazawa, Henry y Chang, Pao-Chi, “A Convention Hall. A Co-operative Project”. Tesis de maestría. Graduate School of Illinois Institute of Technology, 1954.
  • SPEYER, James A. Mies van der Rohe: A RetrospectiveExhibition. Estados Unidos de América: Art Institute of Chicago, 1968.
  • CHICAGO TRIBUNE (19 de noviembre de 1953): 12.
  • ENGINEERING NEWSRECORD, 151 n 24 (10 de diciembre de 1953): 25.