The Resor House was designed by the architect Mies van der Rohe and was his first commission
in the United States after a life spent living and working in Germany. The house was never
built, but it was a crucial milestone in both Mies’ career, life, and the evolution of
his design work. In this video, we’ll explore the Resor House, its history and significance.
And, we’ll model it in the computer and do a realtime walkthrough and reaction to
its design. Stay tuned.
Hello, welcome to Architecture with Stewart. I’m Stewart.
Here in Chicago, the architect Mies van der Rohe looms very large. He spent the majority
of his career in this city and his buildings here helped define an entire generation of
this city’s architecture. It came to be known as the Second Chicago School of Architecture.
Immediately before coming to Chicago though, Mies spent two months living on a Ranch near
Jackson Hole Wyoming. There, he was staying with the Resor family, who commissioned him
to build a dining room for their Ranch on the snake river.
The house was designed at a pivotal moment in Mies’ career and so I decided to take
a deep dive into it, to see what stories I can read in the design. What parts of its
design are like the buildings that Mies was making in Europe, and how does it prefigure
the strategies which would develop later while in America?
So, we modeled the house in the computer to study its design. You can explore that model
using the link in the video description. It will take you to a tab in your browser where
you can walk around it without any special software needed. This video is also broken
into chapters to help you navigate the different parts.
So, without any further ado, let’s explore the Resor House, beginning with the Timeline.
Timeline
The Resor House was designed in 1937 for Stanley and Helen Resor for a site near Jackson Hole
Wyoming by the architect Mies van der Rohe.
Mies van der Rohe, was born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies, in 1886 in Aachen Germany.
Received his first commission while working as a draftsman for a furniture company. The
Reihl House bears few markers of Mies’ later architectural strategies but features a tight
massing with minimal overhangs.
Mies then went on to apprentice at the studio of Peter Behrens from 1908 to 1912, where
he would pick up the phrase ‘Less is More’. This was told to him by Behrens while he was
working on the design for AEG Turbine factory. The building is considered an early example
of a Modern building with its minimal volume and simple use of steel and glass.
Mies’ big transformation comes around 1921 when he decides to change his name and he
enters a design competition with a dream for a shimmering glass tower. Shortly after this,
he began experimenting open plan strategies, which are described in the link above.
It’s during this period that MIes designed his early influential European work like the
Barcelona Pavilion and Tugendaht house. He also becomes the director of the Bauhaus School
for three years from 1930-1933. One student that emerged from this period of the school
is another very influential architect in Chicago, Bertrand Golderberg, who designed Marina City
and the Prentice Women’s hospital.
All this career momentum for Mies is halted by the rise of the Nazi party in Germany which
vilified Modern design. Mies went into hiding until moving to the United States in 1937.
Its here where his first commission is the Resor House. He is also appointed the Head
of Architecture at IIT in Chicago, a role that he would serve for 20 years. Its also
at this school where he would masterplan the entire campus on the se side of Chicago. Not
since Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia, would a single architect be responsible for
an entire American university campus.
The campus work and his tenure as head of the school would come to an end in the late
1950s and shortly after Crown Hall was constructed, the building housing the architecture school.
And all of this took place around 10 years before his death in 1969.
But back in 1937 and Mies was on a new adventure in America when commissioned for the Resor
House at Snake River Ranch. The design built upon work already completed by the architect
Mark Peters, after the Resor’s lost confidence in him.
Mies came to stay at the ranch for two months to work on the project tbefore he would eventually
move to Chicago. Andm while the building was never built for coming in too expensive, the
commission was an important milestone in Mies’ career and helpful motivation for bringing
him to the US.
Analysis One of the striking aspects of the Resor house
to me is the site and the conditions that exist prior to the house and which serve as
strong elements for the design to contend with. One of my preconceptions of Mies is
that he tends to design buildings as isolated objects, rather than overtly appearing to
closely interact with their context.
Of course the Tugendaht house is a notable exception. The way it uses the hill for framing
elevated views and creating privacy. But it is the exception rather than the rule.
This is the site for the Resor House.
It was designed to directly incorporate building elements which had been started but not finished
by the previous architect. This includes an enclosed structure to the west and 3’ x
40’ piers that straddle the creek. These empty pieres actually still exist today, although
I couldn't’ find any photos of them
The building creates a large dining room over the creek and makes use of these pre-existing
elements. Mies tried to understand these conditions by making a series of collages that use images
from posters and magazines melded with drawings of elements that would go into the home like
the columns, furniture, and art.
In these, you can really see him wrestling with symmetry and overlapping layered series
of shifting planes. This is also the first time the scene framed in one of Mies’ collage
is rural landscape instead of an urban setting.
This is also the only house Mies proposed wood cladding, a reddish black cypress - a
compromise from the clients desire for pine. The wood is on the interior and exterior complimented
with stone.
Overall, the design of the house distinguishes itself from the surroundings. The piers it
sits upon are heavy concrete elements, but the structure of the house which extend through
it and down to the piers are Mies’ signature chrome cross-shaped columns that he used in
the barcelona pavilion and the Tugendaht house. While there are large heavy volumes in the
house, they’re reserved for the fireplace, not the structure.
Service sides vs featured open space in the middel
The
interior lines up with a grid, started by the cross columns and referenced throughout
the structure. Even the angled wall lines up with intersections of this grid. The outer
bays are small, while the inner ones are larger and allow for freedom of movement inside the
open plan.
3D Modeling The 3D modeling of the Resor House was relatively
straightforward. Mies van der Rohe’s archive was collected by the Museum of Modern Art
in NY and makes digitized sketches and drawings available to the public. So access to those
is easy.
There were a lot of evoloving iterations of the house though, and deciphering between
them was a chore. The most complete and final version wasn’t the simplest and cleanest.
It’s actually quite complex despite some early models making it look like a simple
bar bridging over the water.
Also the landscape was a significant part of the design and we simply dont’ have the
resources to model that at this time. So we decided to model it like a simple topography,
although this is far from the actual conditions of the building.
Walkthrough Walking up to the Resor house, I’m struck
by how rustic it looks. Even though it takes a relatively simple box shape, its not as
clean as some of Mie’s other designs. There is a lot of wood. This is the first time Mies
clad a building in wood, and man, he want all in.
It is not clear where to enter the building. I can tell where the garage is, so that seems
like a safe bet. The door is around the it Down here there is a lot of stone and a strategically
placed round window that offers a portal view to the river. Like a portal window on a boat.
The entry sequence is almost entirely lined with stone. This heavy material is connected
with the ground and sets up a real dialogue between the wooden parts and the stone parts
of the building.
Once up the stairs, we’re presented with more stone on the back-side of the fire place.
This seems like an entry foyer and you can decide to go outside, go the more private
parts of the house, or the public part.
In order to go to the public zone, you have to walk around the fireplace and get right
up against the glass. You are almost pressed to the outside where the view of the mountains
and landscape would have been phenomenal.
Once you’re there you’re in narrower subdivision of the space as defined by the columns and
walls. It’s interesting that even though the main space is almost completely open,
it does have important lanes, bays, and alignments between elements that define space.
I’m also really struck by the relationship between symmetry and asymmetry in this house.
There is a lot of symmetrical relationships setup between things like between the columns,
or the way the fireplace is situated. But, you’re always approaching these elements
at the side, or parallel to them, so you don’t see the symmetry right away. Or, there’s
an object that breaks the symmetry by being placed in a seemingly random or drifting location.
Takeaways I was unaware of the Resor House before this
exercise and its fascinating to look at what some might call the B-sides of architecture.
If the Farnsworth house is the hit single, this house might be on the other side of the
record. You can learn a lot by watching how someone is working through a problem by studying
these transitional works.
The house seems transitional in more ways than one. Firstly, it was his first commission
in America and thus carries some experiments like the cross columns and throws in new experiments
like wood cladding. It’s also transitional in the sense that it mediates between a powerful
landscape and the pre-existing elements like the piers. The building bridges between these
things and creates a literal physical transition between them.
If you enjoyed this video, please consider giving it a like. I’m really enjoying forensically
reconstructing these unbuilt or demolished buildings. If you like that sort of thing,
check out the playlist of other lost architecture. I also find the conversation in the discussion
section below super fascinating with each video. So, if you’re interested, leave your
thoughts down there and we can continue the conversation about this pivotal building.
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