Mies - Beau Livre

Mies is the most readable, beautiful and comprehensive book ever published on the exceptional twentieth-century architect. The purity of Mies's architecture is almost surprising in light of the diversity of his interests. An autodidact, Mies studied philosophy and science as well as architecture and design. Author Detlef Mertins spent over ten years researching and writing this comprehensive monograph and in addition to travelling to see his buildings and reading nearly everything written by and about Mies, Mertins also conducted a detailed study of the architectural, philosophical and scientific literature in Mies's own library.
The result is a lucid text that not only gives the reader detailed insight into all of Mies's work, but which also explores the variety of ideas that influenced this excep-tional figure. The scholarship is rigorous, but the accessible writing and the highly visual, project-by-project presentation invites readers to explore further. The book's six sections offer a complete portrait of Mies's career and reception, spanning sixty years, two continents and two world wars.
The text tells a continuous story, with most chapters focusing on a significant work, allowing for an in-depth presentation of photographs and drawings, whilst other chapters focus on a specific event in Mies's life, such his time as the head of the Bauhaus in Germany. Ail of Mies's most important buildings are presented through over 700 photographs, original drawings and diagrams, showing the innovative structures, fine details and material richness that dis-tinguish Mies's work.
In addition, many pieces of literature, design, art and architecture that influenced Mies are illustrated and examined. Mies served to inspire a renewal of modernity after postmodernism and his career now appears both black and white, dark and light, complicit and resistant, classical and modern, ordinary and extraordinary. Exploring all these complexities and contradictions, Mies by Detlef Mertins is richly detailed, intricate yet accessible ; the definitive study of Mies's life and work.