Left: Rietveld Schröder House, Utrecht Netherlands, designed by Gerrit Rietveld, 1924
Right: Barcelona Pavilion, Barcelona Spain, designed by Mies Vane Der Rohe and Lilly Reich 1928
The De Stijl Group, after the first world war, set out to create the organic combination of architecture, sculpture and painting in a lucid, elemental, and unsentimental construction. The years following 1918, there was a feeling that the old world was not better. After many had witnessed the carnage across Europe, De Stijl was focused on a new aesthetic. Just as in their name, the word purity embodies some of what they sought after including the simple change from a traditional brown city to a new white one. The past was riddled with the “dogma, tradition, and predominance of the individual”. This according to De Stijl, and even Mies at some points was the launching point toward a new universal style. It is just this universality of things that embodies much of what De Stijl is. The universal had overtaken the individual. After such world altering powers had proven that human scale was no longer the only bar by which humanity was bound.
Within their first manifesto in 1918, the De Stijl group pronounced themselves subtly the “founders of the new culture” and as the leaders toward a better culture, they believed in the rejection of natural form. The idea of universal art, that pulls from universal principles of creation was found to be inherently blocked by the conception of the natural form. It was the very essence of formalism that was prohibiting true creative measures to be taken. Ultimately the De Stijl group was a provocateur, they influenced and promoted the exchange of ideas. Without a doubt, by the 1920’s, De Stijl was keeping many involved across europe and further with month to month periodicals.
Mies Van Der Rohe was at one point a member of the De Stijl, however his motives are directed toward the construction trade rather than at discovering a universal art and methodology for universal creation. Mies, in 1924, introduced some of his principles of construction and industrialization. He stated, in an interesting analogy, that assembly and widespread industrialization of the building trade should no longer involve the building craftsman, just as the motor car is no longer built by the wheelwright. Mies suggests that the answer to most “social, economic, technical and artistic problems” is industrialization within construction. The materials used in building at the time were only beginning to be prefabricated and assembled on site. Mies recommended the development of “universal” materials that have the most beneficial qualities. By 1930, Mies is sure of himself, and alludes prophetically to the idea that the qualities of materials matters far more than the materials themselves and above this argument is that building will lose its meaning with continued progress and disregard for the act of building when focus is on preservation and efficiency. Form is dead, building is the goal. Glass Skyscraper, Concrete Country House, Brick Country House are all strong examples of this theory of disconnection between the act of building and material choice.
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