Mies & the Legacy of Modernism

The wealth of Mies van der Rohe’s work is pre­sent­ed in an orig­i­nal way using a card sys­tem. Mies’s entire oeu­vre is thus orga­nized at a glance, pro­vid­ing eas­i­ly acces­si­ble back­ground infor­ma­tion on the exhi­bi­tion’s theme. The col­lec­tion of spo­lia, fur­ni­ture, and large rem­nants of mate­ri­als from the con­struc­tion sites or from lenders brings an authen­tic and sen­su­al touch to the oth­er­wise sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly ana­lyt­i­cal exhi­bi­tion. The Vil­la Tugend­hat in Brno, the Ver­sei­dag build­ings in Krefeld, Crown Hall, the Lake Shore Dri­ve Apart­ments, and the Carr Memo­r­i­al Chapel in Chica­go are exam­ined inten­sive­ly and interactively.

The 20-meter-wide video instal­la­tion ​“INTER/VIEW” by video artists Dominique Müller and Detlef Weitz plays a spe­cial role in this con­text. Over­all, it is a visu­al­ly impres­sive, pow­er­ful explo­ration of the five promi­nent icons in their cur­rent use.

chezweitz has devel­oped a scenog­ra­phy, includ­ing graph­ics, for the Glass Palace that close­ly reflects Mies’s par­tic­u­lar pen­chant for mate­ri­als. The theme of build­ing research is devel­oped very con­sis­tent­ly and clear­ly with­in a struc­tur­al field of work­bench­es made of stur­dy card­board. The work­bench­es serve to pre­cise­ly doc­u­ment the var­i­ous restora­tion meth­ods. Vis­i­tors are thus pre­sent­ed with a com­pre­hen­sive top­ic that is ini­tial­ly dif­fi­cult for laypeo­ple to access in a clear and visu­al­ly struc­tured man­ner. Plans, pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion, and mate­r­i­al sam­ples are com­pre­hen­si­bly arranged in a coor­di­nate sys­tem thanks to the log­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tion. Ori­en­ta­tion is achieved through the axes, pro­vid­ing clear visu­al orientation.

Out­side, the large dis­play case of the for­mer depart­ment store serves as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the city and its res­i­dents. Here, Lim­burg’s exten­sive trea­sure trove of mod­ern archi­tec­ture is pre­sent­ed, with the aim of encour­ag­ing a fresh and appre­cia­tive look at this often-unloved heritage.