Mies and the landscape

Abstract

The thought and work of Mies van der Rohe are representative of how architecture relates to nature and vice versa. Something that is still present in both his texts and some of his most significant and emblematic projects, such as the Barcelona Pavilion (1929) or the Farnsworth House (1945). He tried to stablish a clear interaction with the place in which architecture is inserted, and also with the landscape. This goal has been pursued as one of the most important values of his work. Especially in Mies’ projects, this concern acquires its own dimension from the symbolic condition of his architecture, whose function is deliberately independent of the act of ‘inhabit’. His architecture distinguishes “insertion in the place” from “mimetic adaptation to the place”. A contextualized architecture -not mimicked-, where landscape and its perception allows to connect environmental, cultural and formal values. These values help understand place as a “whole”, a system of relationships in which the idea of “form” is substituted by the idea of “system”.