Patchiness
OnRamp, SCI-Arc, October, 2012
OnRamp, SCI-Arc, October, 2012
Buildings are always patchworks of different materials, usually materials side-by-side. In the 20th century this often meant that one material would infill a frame made of another material. Mies built a career framing and infilling in the most elegant ways, but was constrained in terms of articulation to the edges of materials—the steel detailing of the frames themselves. Of course, it is now assumed that his dissatisfaction with this condition led him to begin to attempt to articulate the surface itself by welding ornamental steel profiles onto the face of the Seagram Building. This fact is sometimes regarded as an anomaly of Modernism rather than as a productive mutation bringing the discipline one step closer to Postmodernism and a re-engagement of the surface as the site of articulation. The materiality of the postmodern surface was stucco based, which could be discussed in terms of its superficiality if one...



























