“I must say that I was far more riveted by another Mies . . . who, in perfect International Style manner continued to insist on architecture and the production of truth as generated by a set of a priori and universalizing laws, and who was caught up in the entirely modernist obsession of repeating a very small repertory of structural ideas — namely the prismatic tower and the universal space of the clear-span pavilion — and was, throughout his career, committed to the use of the grid.”

—Rosalind Krauss

“Mies loved perhaps long-span buildings better than tall buildings.”

—Gene Summers

Mies van der Rohe’s exploration of universal space and the potentials of clear-span construction began during the war years through his teaching at the Armour Institute in Chicago (now the Illinois Institute of Technology), where he served as director of the Department of Architecture after leaving Germany in 1938. The early projects of note were collaborations with his students — the first being the Concert Hall Project, a theoretical space for 3,000 people that Mies initiated in 1941 with his student, Paul Campagna. Ultimately, Mies took over the work and his office went on to produce the famous collage of Albert Kahn’s Glenn L Martin Aircraft Assembly Building by converting the wartime structure into a large concert hall using only a series of floating acoustical planes in an otherwise uninterrupted space. The work marked a significant conceptual break for Mies as he began to reconcile the continuous horizontal plane with ideas of a large single-span shed and its ensuing flexibility.

Directly following the Concert Hall Project, Mies developed another important theoretical proposal — a Museum for a Small City — in response to a prompt from the magazine Architectural Forum. This time he was working with another student, George Danforth. If the Concert Hall is understood as a conceptual exercise using an appropriated framework (Kahn’s Aircraft Assembly Building), the Museum for a Small City is a first attempt at his own specific architectural solution. The museum utilized a regular column grid and so the project itself was not, strictly speaking, a clear-span structure. There is, however, a small but special moment in the plan where four columns were omitted, allowing for an uninterrupted auditorium space within the columnar field. To achieve this, Mies spanned over the seating area with two upset girders, from which the roof hangs. The perspective sketch that he selected for publication in 1943 interestingly shows the girders peeking out, heroically almost, above the roof line. It was an exoskeleton meant to be seen and a direct precursor to the more dramatic Cantor Drive-In Restaurant in Indianapolis. Here, Mies hung the roof from two massive exposed lattice trusses that span in the long and structurally more challenging direction, producing an almost Venturian-like billboard of the framework. The result was an especially strong image, particularly from the vantage of the automobile, and one well-suited to the landscape of the American commercial strip. Although he proudly included the Cantor Drive-In in his retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947, the project has largely faded from the Miesian canon over the years, likely due to its low associations.

Our drawing series begins at this strange and sometimes forgotten point and describes eight of the key universal space projects that Mies developed during his years in America. In many respects, it is a motley bunch. Only three were built. Of the unbuilt projects, one was without a client or even a prompt. The scales of the works and their respective programs vary immensely, from the individual houses to the colossal 720 x 720 ft (220 x 220 m) column-free Convention Hall in Chicago. Regardless of their differences, however, the universal space projects can most informatively be sorted in two camps —namely the gothic and the classical. The gothic was a term that Mies used to describe his one-way free-span structures, likening them to the flying buttresses of gothic cathedrals. Sometimes his office referred to them as sausage extrusions since the structural concept did not dictate the building’s length. These projects include: the Cantor Drive-In Restaurant in Indianapolis, Indiana (1945–48), the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945–51), the Architecture and Institute of Design Building (SR Crown Hall at IIT) in Chicago, Illinois (1950–56), and the competition entry for the National Theatre in Mannheim, Germany (1952–53). Mies used the term classical to describe his two-way structures which he likened to the peripteros of Greek architecture — a temple surrounded by a colonnade on all four sides. The classical projects include: the Convention Hall in Chicago, Illinois (1953–54), the Bacardi Administration Building in Santiago, Cuba (1957–60), and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany (1962–68). Generally speaking, the earlier works fall into the gothic camp and the later works fall into the classical camp. Sandwiched between these two groups is the 50 x 50 House (1951–52), where Mies, in close collaboration with his former student and long-time assistant Myron Goldsmith, developed both one- and two-way solutions before settling on a classical structure in the final iterations — a logical outcome of the square plan.

The progression of the visual-tectonic relationships in Mies’ work as well as other hidden or suppressed conditions were of particular interest in our drawing series and the absence of finished floors and ceiling surfaces in many instances reveal the forces and flows he was contending with — structurally, thermally, or otherwise. The universal space projects, rendered in this more skeletal fashion, also underscore the degree to which Mies was able to reconcile his conservative and radical ideals — that is, tectonic form and other material concerns versus infinite space, the sublime, and the spiritual ambitions of the avant-garde. Taken collectively, the drawings presented here more broadly look to rearticulate the rigor and steadfastness of Mies’ pursuit of an architectural language and the memetic presentation of structure. His long and stubborn quest for a universal language, born of its time and simultaneously seeking insulation from the crush of future technological advancement, was characterized by an unwavering commitment and internal focus. Mies’ influences are well known — Hendrik Berlage, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Rudolf Schwarz. Such discussions, however, tend to omit the incredibly powerful influence of Mies on Mies and downplay the significant role his intense personal and professional introspection played in his own development. The universal space projects, especially when understood and presented as a singular project, also directs our attention away from individual masterworks, and accompanying minor ones, to a longer and more significant arc. Moreover, the aspiration of our drawing series was to outline one of Mies’ most central pursuits and to encourage a new dialogue between these projects under one umbrella.

Each building in the series is drawn at least once in a 45-degree axonometric format, either regular or reverse axis depending on the subject of the drawing, and depicts the structural elements. It is a bit of a contrarian or outsiders’ rendition given the rarity Mies used axonometry, but contrary to the Miesian perspective, the axonometric drawing favored by many of his contemporaries proved especially helpful in looking past architectural effects and Miesian illusionism to the reality of the constructions themselves. Furthermore, the 45-degree axon (military projection) served to emphasize the roof or ceiling plane and to frustrate a frontal reading of the buildings, and thus became a baseline portrait of each of the works.

With a few exceptions, the gothic structures are drawn from above and emphasize the exterior structure and the classical square plan structures are drawn in reverse axis (worm’s eye) and shift the focus from the roofscape to the interior ceiling plane. In the teetering moment of the 50 x 50 House both drawing techniques are used. Elevations and sections were produced on occasion — for the Farnsworth House to illustrate the floods that have plagued the Fox River property over the years (which Mies planned for, but obviously underestimated), for Robert Silman Associates’ semi-recent proposed in-situ hydraulic solution to preserve the house, and for the Neue Nationalgalerie to illustrate the dramatic 9-hour procedure of raising the 1,000-ton roof into place in April of 1967. The numerous configurations of the 50 x 50 House are shown in plan and highlight the flexibility that Mies explored within the neutrality of a column-free space.

This collection of large-format drawings was produced using the original construction documents from the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art as well as additional drawings and other documents from the engineers, consultants, and fabricators involved. Historical images were carefully referenced in the few instances where limited technical information was available. The drawings were completed by Landry Smith Architect between 2019 and 2022, assisted by Harrison Moser and Ki Yeol Baek. A special thank you to David Dunlap of The New York Times for sharing the drawings that his late father, William Dunlap, had of the Farnsworth House from his time at Mies’ office. These included the steel shop drawings from Wendnagel and Company as well as the screen panels and doors his father designed for the porch. The screens were completed behind the scenes, with Mies’ blessing, after the office’s services were acrimoniously terminated in 1951.