Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe was firstly a builder and later he became a draughts man for Aachen architectural offices. He worked for Bruno Paul till the 1907 and the he joined Peter Behrens, which he started designing for the AEG Company, alongside Walter Gropius. A year after he left Behrens, in 1912 he opened his own office studio, where he started designing offices, houses, etc. Then in 1926, he joined the Deutscher Werkbund and became its vice president. Mart Stam was an inspiration to him as he started to get inspired from the cantilevered chairs. Two chairs that were inspired from Stam are the MR10 chair and the MR20 armchair, both made in tubular steel.
He served as the last director of the Bauhaus and he was the one behind the idea that the school moves from Dessau to Berlin, where it made its end in 1933. Then in Berlin he continued to work as a freelance architect and again he moved to the United States, where he opened architectural offices in Chicago. There he directed the Armour institute, where many studied and later became popular architects. Its aim was to design functional structures rather than ornamental ones.  

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

 MR 10 chair & MR 20 armchair

These chairs were inspired from Mart Stam, who invented the idea of cantilevered chairs. Mies Van Der Rohe was encouraged to improve on this idea and he actually designed it better. The original idea of Stam was with angular and straight pipes, also with “ugly” sockets. So he designed them into more clean and curvy forms, keeping the idea of tubular steel. He also took inspiration of the tubular steel from the Bauhaus from Marcel Breuer.  The technique to achieve those interesting curvatures is the moulding iron piping. These chairs offers good comfort in seating and are safe to use. These two chairs were exhibited in the Weissenhof exhibition.
These chairs were one of the first steel furniture that was being made at that time. The idea of cantilevered chairs made a huge impact on the 20^th century furniture designs. If we take a look around us nowadays, we notice that the ideas of tubular steel and cantilevered chairs are still being designed. 

Mart Stem's Cantilevered chair.

MR10 Chair - 1927

MR20 Armchair - 1927

The Barcelona Pavilion

The Barcelona Pavilion was part of the modern movement, which was built after the WWI. It was originally designed for the King and Queen of Spain, as a resting place. Its structure is very simple and quite effective with the materials used. The materials used are: Roman travertine, golden Onyx marble, Green Alphine marble, ancient green marble from Greece, glass and steel. With all these materials, the pavilion forms its own elegance in a unique and simple way. The pavilion was designed on a grid system which gives alignments of the floor tiles and other things such as the placement of the marble partitions. That statute there is at corner in water is the focal point of the Pavilion, as it can be appreciated from various angles such as from the reflections of the marble steel and water. 

Barcelona Pavilion - Interior

Barcelona Pavilion - Statue reflections on the materials.

Barcelona Pavilion - Interior

Barcelona Pavilion - Interior

Barcelona Pavilion - Exterior

Barcelona Pavilion Plan

At the moment we have an assignment about visualization on 3Ds Max using a Vray plugin to render.  The requirement of this assignment is to assign materials to a ready modelled Barcelona Pavilion. This is to show our knowledge in the software and how well on can observe. Doing this assignment I observed every detail of the pavilion through reference images which helped me out find the materials and assigned them to the 3D model. I also noticed and observed well the reflections the materials have in order to imitate the best visuals possible. I have to say that this assignment made me appreciate the importance of the materials in interiors/exteriors.

The following images are my renders without sky or editing. 

Render 1

Render 2

Render 3

Alongside with this assignment we also had to assign materials to the iconic Barcelona chair, which had to be rendered in a photographic studio. This chair was also designed for the Barcelona Pavilion also by Mies Van Der Rohe, and is still in production nowadays. The simplicity of the chair can also be seen through the materials and its effectiveness.

Original Barcelona Chair

My Barcelona Chair Render.

______________________________________________________________________________

References:

Vitra Design Museum, n.d. MR 10 Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. [online] Available at: http://www.design-museum.de/en/collection/100-masterpieces/detailseiten/mr-10-ludwig-mies-van-der-rohe.html [Accessed 26th May 2016].

Mies van der Rohe Society Illinois Institute of Technology, n.d. Legacy MIES: THE MAN, THE LEGACY. [online] Available at: http://www.miessociety.org/legacy/ [Accessed 26 May].

Knoll Studio, n.d. MR Chair Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ca. 1927. [online] Available at: http://www.knoll.com/product/mr-chair%3Fsection=Design [Accessed 26 May 2016].

Andrew Kroll, 2011, AD Classics: Barcelona Pavilion / Mies van der Rohe. [online] Available at: http://www.archdaily.com/109135/ad-classics-barcelona-pavilion-mies-van-der-rohe [Accessed 26 May 2016].

Mies BCN, n.d. The Pavilion. [online] Available at: http://miesbcn.com/the-pavilion/ [Accessed 26 May 2016].

Hauffe, T., 1998, Design A Concise History. London: Laurence King Publishing.

Fiell C. and Fiell P., 2015. Design of the 20th Century. Köln: Taschen.