From Sketches to Collage: The Paradoxical Representation of the Void in Mies van der Rohe’s Architecture

Abstract

How does one represent the void when it is invisible and lacks limits, yet constitutes the basisof an entire architecture? This foundational paradox of modernity was radically expressed bythe intuitive explorations of Mies van der Rohe in his sketches for courtyard houses in late-1920s Europe, sketches that culminated in his most astonishing, accomplished project: theBarcelona Pavilion; in later years, these explorations were expressed through the collagesfor his first American project, the Resor House. Examining these sketches and collages willreveal the architect’s visionary ambitions and the difficulties in making them a material reality;paradoxically, this is one of the aspects that the unlimited, weightless and unfinished voidlacks, which his architecture “constructed” aporetically, making it just another material, if notthe most important.