Gehry said of his work from the period, “I thought that by minimizing the issue of function, by creating one-room buildings, we could resolve the most difficult problems in architecture. Think of the power of one-room buildings and the fact that historically, the best buildings ever built are one-room buildings.”
Mies’ most original buildings are one-story structures, and the greatest of these consist of one room. In this sense Mies has designed nothing but temples, which is to say that he has revealed the irrational mainspring of our technological culture.
Kahn:“The Scottish Castle. Thick, thick walls. Little openings to the enemy. Splayed inwardly to the occupant. A place to read, a place to sew. . . . Places for the bed, for the stair. . . . Sunlight. Fairy tale.”This influenced Kahn in several buildings, including the Richards Medical Centre.
Farnsworth House - Mies van der Rohe
Eliminated partitions to create a one-room house to enable glass exterior
Glass House - Philip Johnson
Service spaces disguised as freestanding objects to create one-room
Comolongon Castle - Scottish Tower
Subsidiary rooms contained within the thick walls of a single central room
Richards Medical Centre - Louis Kahn
Square spaces laboratories clustered around a central service core
Retirement House - Alison & Peter Smithson
Owing a debt to Kahn, the service appendages surround the served space
Retirement House - Alison & Peter Smithson
Plan shows the former turned inside out leaving routes through flowing space
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