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Mies Got Lego’d
April 20th, 2011
By Ryan McGarraugh, Project Coordinator
In light of the recent announcement that the latest Lego Architecture set is a reproduction of Mies Van de Rohe’s Farnsworth house, I was reminded of the long standing argument between Mies and Philip Johnson about how the columns ought to be arranged in order to make a proper glass house. Mies of course, in the Farnsworth house, held the last column back from the corner creating a cantilever (1/3 the span, + or -) while his then acolyte, Johnson, elected to place it at the corner when he designed his own “Glass” house. As the story goes, the master was so irritated by Johnson’s structural blunder that he stomped out of Johnson’s home in a legendary fit of Germanic temper, saying that he “….could not stand to stay in this house another minute!” So I had to ask myself, is Lego, by releasing the Farnsworth house first, taking the side of Mies in this famous dispute?
Posted in Opinion
