UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
udd
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The Client’s Revenge
federico soriano
3
Textos 2020-2021
D.VOBIS, Yasmin, in CIRCO, serie La Casa del Aire, 2008.147. 14 International Arc. Exhibition. Biennale di Venezia
1.AN ABSOLUTE PLACEMENT Figure 3 corresponds to the floor plan of the Farnsworth House that we are used to seeing. It seems to provide the narrowest definition of the functions and privileges of domesticity. But when one looks at the evidence of the built house - all the photos, the testimonies, the house today - one realizes that the house in that drawing does not exist. The inhabitants have always felt the need to add objects. This is their chance for revenge. Mies devoted a lot of attention to the placement of the furniture, experimenting with various variations before deciding on a minimum scheme of independent furniture. Their placement in space is more than a simple liberation of the wall. Rather, furniture replaces walls as a mechanism for prescribing programmatic zones in a space. Despite these careful studies, Mies’ vision was quickly violated by an act of revenge. When Edith Farnsworth moved, she was still resentful of the lawsuits she had recently lost against Mies. She quickly filled the house with a miscellany of ‘unsuitable’ items: 1
extension of her disorganized living room, evenly sown with Fu Dogs, lounge chairs, and a plethora of potted plants. In an act of contravention, when modern architecture enthusiast Lord Palumbo won Edith’s house in 1972, he attempted to restore it with precision following Mies’ vision. He brought the required three Tugendhat chairs, a Mies sofa bed, the appropriate dining table with its four chairs, the glass bedside table and the bed. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that he couldn’t live without his Bertoia chairs... and then there was also that chaise longue, the fluffy carpet, a desk, a chest, a bench, and, of course, his hundreds of works of art. Soon enough, sculptures appeared near the windows. The walls of the bathroom were covered with a few dozen small drawings and paintings. All the horizontal surfaces received piles of paintings (I did not think it appropriate to hang them on the vertical surfaces of the cabinets). More than ever before, the horizontal surfaces became walls - not only the main means of enclosure, but also the art exhibition plan. No doubt, that was far from the ordered logic and clarity that Mies had envisioned. His was an absolute placement. (Even if he would have glued the furniture if he could; there is a reason why his chairs are so heavy. Have you ever tried to take a Barcelona Chair?) By making local differentiations within this universal space, the furniture indicates how to use the space without resorting to traditional divisions. Furniture is thus the only marker of human presence in Mies’ idealized and Cartesian universe. How does Mies distinguish the Barcelona Pavilion from a temple, if not with a pair of Barcelona Chairs, ready to receive the King and Queen of Spain? Looking at the furniture, the subject to which the house alludes emerges. The house was designed for a single subject, providing only the narrowest definition of the functions and privileges of domesticity. Or more explicitly, there is only one bed. Mies frees the domestic space of the family, substituting it instead with a single subject. But this subject was not Edith Farnsworth (a body he literally had
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roller shutters, antique family relics chairs, and prosaic objects. The portico space, enclosed with bronze mesh, became an extension of her disorganized living room, evenly sown with Fu Dogs, lounge chairs, and a plethora of potted plants. In an act of contravention, when modern architecture enthusiast Lord Palumbo won Edith’s house in 1972, he attempted to restore it with precision following Mies’ vision. He brought the required three Tugendhat chairs, a Mies sofa bed, the appropriate dining table with its four chairs, the glass bedside table and the bed. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that he couldn’t live without his Bertoia chairs... and then there was also that chaise longue, the fluffy carpet, a desk, a chest, a bench, and, of course, his hundreds of works of art. Soon enough, sculptures appeared near the windows. The walls of the bathroom were covered with a few dozen small drawings and paintings. All the horizontal surfaces received piles of paintings (I did not think it appropriate to hang them on the vertical surfaces of the cabinets). More than ever before, the horizontal surfaces became walls - not only the main means of enclosure, but also the art exhibition plan. No doubt, that was far from the ordered logic and clarity that Mies had envisioned. His was an absolute placement. (Even if he would have glued the furniture if he could; there is a reason why his chairs are so heavy. Have you ever tried to take a Barcelona Chair?) By making local differentiations within this universal space, the furniture indicates how to use the space without resorting to traditional divisions. Furniture is thus the only marker of human presence in Mies’ idealized and Cartesian universe. How does Mies distinguish the Barcelona Pavilion from a temple, if not with a pair of Barcelona Chairs, ready to receive the King and Queen of Spain? Looking at the furniture, the subject to which the house alludes emerges. The house was designed for a single subject, providing only the narrowest definition of the functions and privileges of domesticity. Or more explicitly, there is only one bed. Mies frees the domestic space of the family, substituting it instead with a single subject. But this subject was not Edith Farnsworth (a body he literally had 3
to hide by making a second bathroom, so that visitors “would not see Edith’s nightgown on the back of the bathroom door “1). The dwelling subject is not the client, but Mies himself. Considering her aristocratic relationship with Edith, Mies projects herself onto the house. 2.REVENGE What to do with such a house, where one - ideally no more than one - can live, eat, sleep and relax? What would happen if a schism came to cut that subject in two? Yasmin D. Vobis, May 2008
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