‘LIFTING MIES

A post-Fordist nip-and-tuck rejuvinates the aging prom-queen

Mies Facelift

It is said that Architecture moves too slowly. Perhaps the lagging profession has something to learn from the overnight identity transforming procedures of plastic surgery. Mies van der Rohe’s Seagrams Building, epitomising late Modernism’s embrace of Fordist repetition, is taken as a case study. Could a strategy of modification, a post-Fordist nip-and-tuck, rejuvinate this aging trophy to let it stand alongside Manhattans newest starlet towers?

Seagram Facelift Detail 1

‘Lifting Mies is a catalog of such surgical procedures that operate directly on Mies’ canonical decorative I-beam. The techniques eschew the addition of unecessary material, the conventional approach to ornamentation, and instead rely on the alteration of what exists — as a facelifts would. No longer identifiable as something dispensable and separate from the restructured body, surgery allows ornamentation to evade easy recognition, just as the ideal facelift transforms one’s identity without revealing the work of the surgeon. By cutting, reshaping, and stitching, surgical techniques make ornament essential to the body, and the pace of New York image-making.

Seagram Facelift Elevation 1

Seagram Facelift 1

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‘Lifting Mies was recently published in its entirety in 306090 v10: Decoration. A copy can be purchased here.