Rhetoric in the architectural image. Mies van der Rohe: collage and montages for the construction of the architectural image.
Michele Bagnato, University "Mediterranea" of Reggio Calabria, Italy.
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Rhetoric in the architectural image.
Mies van der Rohe: collage and montages for the construction of the architectural image. “Dia-bolic is all that divides, Sym-bolic all that approaches. The image is beneficial because is symbolic.” (Régis Debray, 1992) Abstract: On how Mies built the image, and more specifically the architectural image, we could answer indirectly or directly. But any response presupposes the need to use a broad "image theory", which could to make it a philosophy of it, diverting our main goal: to identify the symbolic value of the architectural image, and the efficacy of it as an "extrinsic image" (which gives to see); taking part in a preponderant way to the circuit of the images that marked character and face to the city, but above all penetrated in the collective imaginary. Mies van der Rohe had the masterful ability to ensure that, the images of architectural artifacts, could make themselves 'bearer' from other characters that does not concern more specifically the single exact representation of the statutes of architecture. The photomontages of the Mies, therefore, worked with the assumption to be medium for communication; conceived starting from its possible "media reproducibility", in order to convey and 'send messages' beyond the place for which it was conceived. On the other hand, it is the same principle that contemporary images are produced, which do not concern only the architecture; and it is for the latter aspect that we support that, starting from the work of "montage" miesiano, the architecture has entered in a preponderant way in the circuit of the proliferation of the images in the contemporary epoch. Through the study of two works by the German architect (expressed by photomontages, which “They helped make him famous” (Dal Co, 2018)), we will analyze as the construction of the architectural image, has, to a certain extent, been caught in the techniques of art, photography, collage, cinematographic editing, a specific way of imagining and constructing architecture; using codifications similar to other fields of visual art and visuality.
Up: - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, project of a skyscraper on the FriedrichstraĂ&#x;e, Berlin 1921, drawing and photomontage. Down: - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, project for a glass skyscraper, 1922, drawing and photomontage.
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Up (from left to right): - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, project for the store Adam, Berlin 1928-29, tempera and photomontage. - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, project for a commercial building, Stuttgart 1928, photomontage. - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, project for an office building on the FriedrichstraĂ&#x;e, Berlin 1929. Down (from left to right): - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, project for Alexanderplatz, Berlin 1929, photomontage. - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, project for the campus Armour Institute (Illinois Institute of Technology), Chicago 1947, photomontage.
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Resor House, Jackson Hole, photomontage, Wyoming 1938 ca.
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Resor House, Jackson Hole, photomontage, Wyoming 1938 ca.
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Resor House, Jackson Hole, photomontage, Wyoming 1938 ca.
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Resor House, Jackson Hole, photomontage, Wyoming 1938 ca.
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Up: - Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn, frames taken from the film «Strike», feature film (duration 82 ’), 1924. Down: - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Resor House, Jackson Hole, photomontage, Wyoming 1938 ca.
"Reality is not always plausible. But when you write a story, you have to make it as probable as possible, because the reader's imagination rejects it. [...] I could never say “look what horrible thing has happened” [...] this type of consideration must be left to the readers [...] otherwise, everything collapses" (Borges, 1973).
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Bibliography:
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Borges, Luis George, Borges on Writing, Hopewell (New Jersey), The Ecco Press, 1994. Goodman, Nelson, Ways of Worldmaking, Indianapolis-Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, 1978, (tr. It. Marletti, Carlo, Vedere e costruire il mondo, Bari, Editori Laterza, I. ed. 1988.). Marin, Louis, “L’essere dell’immagine e la sua efficacia”. In Teorie dell’immagine, il dibattito contemporaneo, Milano, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2009. Koolhaas, Rem, Delirious New York, New York, Oxford University Press, 1978, (ed. it. curated by Biraghi, Marco, Delirious New York, Un manifesto retroattivo per Manhattan, Milano, Electa, 2001.). Pallasmaa, Juhani, Frammenti, Collage e discontinuità nell’immaginario architettonico, curated by Zambelli, Matteo, Pordenone Giavedoni editori, 2012. Stierli, Martino, Montage and the Metropolis, Architecture, Modernity, and Representation of Space, New Haven-London, Yale University Press, 2018. Tafuri Manfredo, Dal Co Francesco, Architettura Contemporanea, Milano, Mondadori Electa, 1977.
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