摘要:
Contributing to the burgeoning study of the domestic interior, a field of inquiry existing in the interstices of architecture, design, interior decoration, and material culture, this dissertation presents a thematic study of the modern domestic interiors of German/American architect/designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1965) designed in collaboration with fellow German architect/designer Lilly Reich (1885–1947) during the 1920s and early 1930s in Weimar Germany. Inspired by a revealing but hitherto overlooked statement by Philip Johnson in the catalogue for the influential 1932 International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that referred to Mies as "a decorator in the best sense," it focuses primarily on a particular aspect of Mies's and Reich's interiors, the moveable fabric partition wall, through the lens of the modernist bias against decoration and the hierarchical relationship between architecture and interior decorating. Reich's significance as Mies's partner, both professional and personal, is considered in relation to that gendered bias. An underexplored but consistent feature of the Neues Bauen (modern architecture in Germany), the curtain partition was a central functional component in Mies's celebrated open or free plan that also operated on a number of complex symbolic levels. Comprising both soft furnishing (an element of interior decor) and architectural form, the fabric wall was highly referential and innately opulent rather than reductive and abstract, reflecting key aspects of Weimar culture with its emphasis on dynamic movement, while on a more private level, indicative of a conception of domesticity undergoing profound change. Using an interdisciplinary methodological approach, this study analyzes the curtain partition of Mies and Reich in relation to a series of significant themes, including functionalism and the nature of materials, interiority, domesticity, the decorative, the European fascination with the "primitive,