ABSTRACT
In deviating from prefabricated standards, the window details at the Commons eschewed the promised certainties of mass-produced components, readily available to order via product catalogues stocked in architectural offices throughout the USA, including the office of Mies van der Rohe. Explicitly rejecting aesthetic and individual speculation, Mies wrote:The building art is always the spatially apprehended will of the epoch, nothing else. Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) claim that it was ‘always a battle to get something which they considered practical and function in design’ reveals the extent to which Mies’ interpretations of the promises of industrial standardisation differed from that of the IIT administration. ‘Our needs’, Mies continued:have assumed such proportions that they can no longer be met with the methods of craftsmanship. Biographical and autobiographical narratives prioritise the primacy of Mies’ personal control over all aspects of the work, even when delegation became necessary.
