To quote from Mediating Modernism: ...'maybe the true site of 'modern architecture' as it has been developed is not the suburban location of a series of inconveniently located villas, but the pages of the far more accessible publications that document and present this work.'(p11)
Visiting Mies van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat in suburban Brno, a Czech city not otherwise on the map for very much and two or three hours from either Prague or Vienna, is not easily undertaken. It reopened for public visits less than a year ago after an extremely thorough and well-funded restoration: the absence of the patina of age and use is a little disconcerting, and reminiscent of the 1986 facsimile of the Barcelona Pavilion the original of which Mies was building at the same time. So what do you get from a visit that all those published images and accompanying discourse don't tell you ? Plenty: the sense of the relationship between the set pieces that photographs and plans don't fully disclose. The effects of its rich and quite startling materiality, the chrome columns, milky opalescent glass, figured ebony and onyx slab. The technology that supports the innovations such as air filtration and heating and the wonderful windows that retract into the floor. And the exquisite way the building frames its setting and the view of the city across the valley.
Visiting Mies van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat in suburban Brno, a Czech city not otherwise on the map for very much and two or three hours from either Prague or Vienna, is not easily undertaken. It reopened for public visits less than a year ago after an extremely thorough and well-funded restoration: the absence of the patina of age and use is a little disconcerting, and reminiscent of the 1986 facsimile of the Barcelona Pavilion the original of which Mies was building at the same time. So what do you get from a visit that all those published images and accompanying discourse don't tell you ? Plenty: the sense of the relationship between the set pieces that photographs and plans don't fully disclose. The effects of its rich and quite startling materiality, the chrome columns, milky opalescent glass, figured ebony and onyx slab. The technology that supports the innovations such as air filtration and heating and the wonderful windows that retract into the floor. And the exquisite way the building frames its setting and the view of the city across the valley.
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