Believe it or not, some of modern architecture’s most storied white boxes were never meant to remain so white. While Adolf Loos was skirmishing with Vienna’s Secessionist architects and descrying the whipping, stylized vines of their nature-inspired ornament, his 1930 Villa Müller in Brno was designed to be partially concealed in actual, living vines. Like Loos, Mies van der Rohe intended for some of his plastered white facades to be covered in vegetation. Few have paused to contemplate how this affects modernism’s clean, hard-edged historiographies, but with all this in mind, Act Romegialli Architects’ renovation of a disused garage on the slopes of the Raethian Alps — which uses raw nature as its primary form of exterior ornament — can be considered quite modern. More after the jump.

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If you’re anything like, um, everyone else who uses the Internet, you spend a good chunk of your time online looking at animal photos. But while the World Wide Web abounds with images of writers and their dogs, or celebrities and their cats, or Salvador Dali and his lobsters, there are dismayingly few—if any—Architecture + Animal posts. (Believe us, we’ve Googled it. Lots.) So, inspired by our friends at Buzzfeed and their amazing Corgi roundups, we present: starchitects and dogs, specifically their doggy doppelgängers. Because, it’s Friday, and we—and you—deserve it. Click through to see them all!

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Happy would-be birthday, Mies van der Rohe (that’s Roe-ah)! Among the 20th century’s preeminent masters, Mies (and his work) continues to resonate with contemporary architecture and architects in a way that, perhaps, Le Corbusier or, most certainly, Frank Lloyd Wright do not. Miesian themes of transparency, structure, and universality still hold water in contemporary architecture, both in practice and discourse, even if the master’s perfected steel-and-glass neo-classical forms no longer warrant replication. The recent renovation of the Tugendhat House (1930) and the reprogramming of Mies’s Esso Station in Montreal speak to the former point, both drastically different typologies that still represent and reinforce the core of Mies’ architecture. The hallmarks of Mies’ career—the Barcelona Pavilion, Crown Hall, the Farnsworth House, 86-880 Lakeshore Drive, the Chicago Federal Center, the Seagram Building—are noted landmarks of modernist architecture and counted by nearly everybody among the finest buildings of the last century.

The video below was produced by the Illinois Institute of Technology to celebrate the 75th year of Mies’ emigration to the United States and the founding of his practice in Chicago. It’s 12 minutes long—perfect to watch while finishing your morning bagel.

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This week, the Farnsworth House, one of the masterpieces of midcentury modern architecture, posted photographs of the transparent structure surrounded by floodwaters! Built in 1951 and located outside of Chicago, the Mies van der Rohe-designed building has suffered flooding before, in 2008, which caused significant damage. While the staff does not expect the water to enter the house, all emergency precautions have been taken.

Photos: courtesy of the Farnsworth House

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Sleek modern buildings look best when they’re clear of clutter (preferably free of people too), their gleaming surfaces and perfect state of cleanliness seeming to exist without mundane maintenance. Well, Architect Andrés Jaque and the Office for Political Innovation have decided to challenge that myth.  Commissioned to produce an installation at Mies Van der Rohe’s iconic Barcelona Pavilion, the group dug through the basement and revealed the inevitable junk and tools that any building — even an uninhabited one — accumulates over time. Read more!

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Children grow up knowing the names of famous sports players, pop singers, and cartoon characters. But what about notable architects? Where’s the respect? Architecture is rarely part of formal education (within and without scholastic settings), but things could be helped if the names of Le Corbusier, Arata Isozaki, or, yes, Frank Lloyd Wright were introduced to younglings in their early years. “The ABC of Architects” seems ideally suited for such a purpose, functioning as an introduction for budding students of architecture. The abecedary operates visually through a clever animation in which each canonical project flows seamlessly to the next. The horizontal planes of (M) Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion morph effortlessly into the space-age forms of (N) Niemeyer’s National Congress of Brazil. Watch the video after the break.

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Building: Gas Station Bülowstrasse

Architect: bfs d flachsbarth schultz

Location: Berlin Schöneberg, Germany

Why We Liked This:

While gas stations today are dreadful things, stripped of any superfluous whimsy or gestural flourish, the mid-century gas station was a design typology all its own, with even the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe putting forward their own versions. The Gas Station Bülowstrasse is actually a small gallery which takes its name from the property’s erstwhile program. For the conversion, the architects renovated every component of the building’s nifty design, including the prefabricated industrial glazing and the sculptural floating roof, the only material link to the site’s former self. A small garden and shallow pool were integrated in the plan, while the interiors were given the white-out treatment. See more of this project in the Architizer database here.

You think you’ve got a better project? Submit it for an Architizer A+ Award!

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Mies van der Rohe’s Lafayette Towers; Photo via

The collapse of the housing market five years ago still finds particular resonance in Detroit, where even iconic designs, it seems, are not immune to ruin. Mies van der Rohe’s twin high-rise blocks in Detroit’s Lafayette Park were foreclosed in February of this year and, now the city’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced that the buildings will be auctioned away to one lucky bidder on Wednesday, July 18^th. The Lafayette Towers were a part of a pioneering urban renewal initiative in the early 60’s by Mies and visionary–some might say mental–urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer, and the slab-in-the-park scheme they represent is a prime, if sleek example of the socially-minded architecture of the era.

While the auction price may result in quite the deal, there are a few caveats attached to the property. The new buyer will have to shell out $10 million to renovate the towers’ 584 units and complete an exhaustive 80-page list of renovations (including new bathtubs and installing peepholes) within 18 months. They must also deposit $2.5 million into an escrow account that the HUD can access in the event that repairs are not completed as scheduled. We won’t have to wait very long to see if a buyer emerges to save the Mies’ blocks from further decay and restore the towers to their former glory.

[via Curbed]

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A Necessary Ruin, 2012

Le Corbusier may have patented his seminal ‘Maison Dom-ino” in 1914–what would become the defining structural model of the 20th century–but it was Mies van der Rohe’s 1919-1922 glass skyscraper projects that first explored the system’s extensive and poetic applications. Mies took Corbu’s Taylorized device of stacking reinforced concrete slabs and sheathed it in an entirely-glass dress, wrapping it up in a multi-faceted curtain of reflections and impressions and paradoxically enhancing the clarity of the the skeletal frame. ”Skyscrapers reveal their powerful structure during construction; only then is the gigantic steel trunk truly expressive”, wrote Mies of his skyscraper designs. “When the panel walls are in position, the structural system at the basis of the composition is hidden behind a chaos of insignificant and trivial forms.”

Robert Minervini‘s work evokes the ethereally sculptural qualities Mies attributed to his “bare” skyscrapers. In a series of paintings, Minervini imagines ghostly construction sites, both abandoned and hosting activity, populated by giant empty concrete frames stranded in vast overgrown fields and resting silently under ominous skies. Click through for more.

Misty Mountain, 2012

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Last month, Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat Villa reopened to the public after an $8.8 million, 2-year, reconstruction. The 1930 villa, built for Fritz and Greta Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, is a groundbreaking example of modern architecture, a poetic union of glass, steel, marble and reinforced concrete that touts Mies’ “less is more” design philosophy through and through. Though it commands respect as a prototype of the modernist ethos, it can almost only be thought of as such; the villa was a home to the Tugendhats for a mere 8 years before the family abandoned the house and fled the country during World War II. Shortly thereafter, the villa fell into disrepair, with no means of upkeep as the beginning of communism took hold in the Czech Republic.

Today, the Villa Tugendhat stands as a salient prototype of historic preservation. After an extensive research period that pieced together original construction plans archived at the MoMA and photographs of the home from the Tugendhat family, Mies’ masterpiece has been faithfully restored. David Židlický recently snapped photos of the restored Villa Tugendhat for Dwell; click through for more photos.

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