ABSTRACT
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe dispelled the traces of traditional tectonics from the mode and created incontrovertibly modernist examples. Mies began sketches for planning Armour Institute's expansion soon after his 1938 emigration to Chicago, Precursors there are numerous. The gradual transformation of Mies's campus plan from asymmetry to greater axiality has been noted often. Mies largely suppresses that, making all his sashes rigorously equivalent. Mies's Reichsbank points not only toward Crown Hall but to those non-screen-like projects, too. Crown Hall is a prime object within the series, even though it lays nowhere near German-speaking Europe. Dialectical formulations populate the Miesian literature, reaching far beyond Crown Hall. Crown Hall's facade becomes a boundary between meanings, as with many of the greatest screens. Crown Hall's binding challenges whether mimesis and negation, as seen by W. Adorno, are truly irreconcilable. Mies makes Adorno's gloomy predictions seem premature.
