[X-fib]

Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe's Chicago buildings are immediately recognizable as his designs: 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, IBM, Federal Center, Illinois Center and on. Few modern architects can make a similar claim for their works. Even those buildings that were Mies inspiration such as Lake Point Tower, or influenced such as the Daley Center, Sears Tower and arguably John Hancock, Marina City, 333 Wacker, etc. etc. are collectively Miesian. They form the basis of 1950s, '60s and early '70s architectual design in Chicago.

Today many view his works as dark, teutonic, or utilitarian to the point of being inhuman. Architecture not as art but as pure form. To others they represent perfection. The absolute definition of form following fuction, free of a concrete blanket and devoid of purposeless ornamentation. Taken in perspective, in their day Mies buildings were a radical departure from the mondane of the earlier modern movement and from the general mediocrity of the period architecture. The reality of Mies concepts is that his narrow interpretation left little room for variability. Even arguably his most beautiful design, Lake Point Tower, is little more than a curvelinear Federal Center. Recognizability had its drawbacks in commonality.

Mies was certainly the most influentual architect of his time, in Chicago at least. Whether his buildings represent perfection or an eyesore is in the beholder. To me a Chicago without Mies would be unimaginable.