When less was more: the construction of Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/ic.78401Keywords:
Mies van der Rohe, Frank Kornacker, Crown Hall, graduate program IIT, architectural education, Geneva HouseAbstract
The S. R. Crown Hall is the first constructed example of a large-span universal space in the career of the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Intended to house the school of architecture of which he was director, the project also had to summarise the first of the principles on which his teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology was based: structure as an architectural factor, its possibilities, and limitations. This article explores the development process of Mies’ project, putting it in context with his experience as a professor at the IIT, seeking to establish possible connections between his architecture and his teaching. To do so, the final structural solution is compared with one of the projects supervised by him as part of the graduate program: Jacques Brownson’s house. Two structures on a different scale, but identical in typology, both of which were developed with the collaboration of structural engineer Frank Kornacker.
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References
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