The best thing for me about the Arts Conference lecture was the chance to put some of this into words - some of how I relate to Architecture, and some of why I think the built world matters to me as a citizen and as a believer in a Creative God.
This year, our church held its Second Annual Ping-Pong Tournament.Despite the obvious gratification of the contest at hand, it had the benefit of a perpetuity and tradition that the First Annual Ping-Pong Tournament only hoped toward. Tonight, as a matter of discipline, I'm beginning what I hope will be the first in a series of descriptions of images, images of Architecture.
This photo is from 1995, in Plano, Illinois, looking across the Fox River toward what I knew from school as Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe's Farnsworth House. There's some recent news about this house, that it's been purchased for posterity by the National Trust. In school, it was touted as one of the pinnacles of Modernism. For me, it is a favorite second to Philip Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut.
This photo shows the closest I ever got to this house. We actually drove by once in the summer, but the leafy trees entirely obscured any view.
Most of Mies' other work is highly public - either skyscrapers in Chicago and New York or academic. The absolute clarity of the structure, that is the definition of Modern in these buildings, is obvious and unobscured. It sits exactly on the right-of-way of a city block, perceived by countless commuters in its full statement on order.
There was no way for me to get a clear shot of the Farnsworth House without climbing a barbed fence or swimming a frozen river. But, the order of this piece of modern elegance is still obvious as it sits in surprisingly harmonious contrast to the natural order of the overgrowth around it. In the gray of winter (and this was almost Spring!), the white of the steel even mimics the white on the water.
Trying to write more about this masterpiece gets a little more academic than I mean to go, so I'll stop there with simple associations. How cool to see steel speak the same language as old woods and water?
