Okay, here’s a sarcastic blog post version of your original text, stripped down to the essentials:
“I had come from Baltimore to Chicago on business in the 2010s when I had a very strange architectural experience.
Back home in Baltimore, I worked in the Van der Rohe-designed One Charles Center. Now, standing smoking outside my hotel in Chicago, I was staring at my own work building as though it had been airlifted by aliens and set down in this completely different city.
The Chicago version was, to be sure, scaled up quite a bit—a building that tall in midcentury Baltimore would have been anomalous, and even nowadays would stand out (up?).
But I’d been looking at the Baltimore building my whole life and more recently, every single day, and for all intents and purposes it was the same building!
I did a little looking around back then and again more recently for some reason (I no longer work in that building) and turns out, both the Chicago and Baltimore buildings are basically… the NYC seagrams building.
Now, I’m not an architect, so I’m sure there are subtleties beyond size that differ between these three buildings. But I feel like that’s splitting hairs.
I was working with the company when we moved into one Charles so I was present before and during the build of our floor. So I know that really in these buildings the exterior is all there is (above the lobby anyway). The interior has a central elevator/service core—and the rest is a blank canvas onto which tenants impose their own floor plans etc.
Given that the exterior really is the heart of the design vision, and given that after Seagram I assume Mies was famous enough to pick and choose his commissions, WHY would he elect to build the same thing over and over again? Was it a case of “me-too-ism” on the part of the clients? (In Baltimore I can totally see that happening—less so in Chicagoland though.) Was he fading as a creative talent?
Thoughts?
”
I had come from Baltimore to Chicago on business in the 2010s when I had a very strange architectural experience.
Back home in Baltimore, I worked in the Van der Rohe-designed One Charles Center. Now, standing smoking outside my hotel in Chicago, I was staring at my own work building as though it had been airlifted by aliens and set down in this completely different city.
The Chicago version was, to be sure, scaled up quite a bit—a building that tall in midcentury Baltimore would have been anomalous, and even nowadays would stand out (up?).
But I’d been looking at the Baltimore building my whole life and more recently, every single day, and for all intents and purposes it was the same building!
I did a little looking around back then and again more recently for some reason (I no longer work in that building) and turns out, both the Chicago and Baltimore buildings are basically… the NYC seagrams building.
Now, I’m not an architect, so I’m sure there are subtleties beyond size that differ between these three buildings. But I feel like that’s splitting hairs.
I was working with the company when we moved into one Charles so I was present before and during the build of our floor. So I know that really in these buildings the exterior is all there is (above the lobby anyway). The interior has a central elevator/service core—and the rest is a blank canvas onto which tenants impose their own floor plans etc.
Given that the exterior really is the heart of the design vision, and given that after Seagram I assume Mies was famous enough to pick and choose his commissions, WHY would he elect to build the same thing over and over again? Was it a case of “me-too-ism” on the part of the clients? (In Baltimore I can totally see that happening—less so in Chicagoland though.) Was he fading as a creative talent?
Or maybe skyscrapers/high rises weren’t really his thing? I remember being told at one point when we moved into the building that Rohe was afraid of heights and that’s why the sides weren’t full glass curtain walls. But that may be apocryphal.
Thoughts?
I had come from Baltimore to Chicago on business in the 2010s when I had a very strange architectural experience.
Back home in Baltimore, I worked in the Van der Rohe-designed One Charles Center. Now, standing smoking outside my hotel in Chicago, I was staring at my own work building as though it had been airlifted by aliens and set down in this completely different city.
The Chicago version was, to be sure, scaled up quite a bit—a building that tall in midcentury Baltimore would have been anomalous, and even nowadays would stand out (up?).
But I’d been looking at the Baltimore building my whole life and more recently, every single day, and for all intents and purposes it was the same building!
I did a little looking around back then and again more recently for some reason (I no longer work in that building) and turns out, both the Chicago and Baltimore buildings are basically… the NYC seagrams building.
Now, I’m not an architect, so I’m sure there are subtleties beyond size that differ between these three buildings. But I feel like that’s splitting hairs.
I was working with the company when we moved into one Charles so I was present before and during the build of our floor. So I know that really in these buildings the exterior is all there is (above the lobby anyway). The interior has a central elevator/service core—and the rest is a blank canvas onto which tenants impose their own floor plans etc.
Given that the exterior really is the heart of the design vision, and given that after Seagram I assume Mies was famous enough to pick and choose his commissions, WHY would he elect to build the same thing over and over again? Was it a case of “me-too-ism” on the part of the clients? (In Baltimore I can totally see that happening—less so in Chicagoland though.) Was he fading as a creative talent?
Or maybe skyscrapers/high rises weren’t really his thing? I remember being told at one point when we moved into the building that Rohe was afraid of heights and that’s why the sides weren’t full glass curtain walls. But that may be apocryphal.
Thoughts?
