Learning by doing. Arts&English for young students

Seagram Building

By: Candela Suárez and Unai Loidi

SEAGRAM BUILDING:

It was made in 1954-1958, it is found in New York, Park Avenue and it has a modern style.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

It was made by the german architect Miles van der Rohe, with the help of Philip Jhonson. Ludwis was born in Aquisgrán, Germany, 27-3-1886 and he died in Chicago, Illinois, 17-8-1969. Among his most famous works of this period highlights the Seagram Building (1958), a skyscraper of 39 floors of glass and bronze built in New York along with his disciple Philip Johnson.

In 1959 he retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology.From 1962-1968 built the National Gallery in Berlin. It is a building dedicated to exhibitions of works of art, consisting of a large square room built entirely of glass and steel and set on a large terrace of granite slabs.

The August 17, 1969 died in Chicago, leaving as a legacy a new standards for architecture that under his as disclosed slogans "Less is more" and "God is in the details", which considers it as one of the most important masters of modern architecture.

STRUCTURE AND MATERIALS:

The structure, 39 floors, combines a steel frame and reinforced concrete core to resist the lateral thrust of the wind. Said core rises to the 17th floor, and diagonal braces to the floor 29.2.

It is based on the precepts of the International Style, it was influential in American architecture. One such principle is to make a real architecture, in which the inner structure articulates the external aesthetics of the building. The architect's original idea was that the plot of structural steel hanging glass curtain walls saw, but the American building regulations required to cover all structural steel elements with some fireproof material, such as concrete, to prevent in case of fire to melt and hide gave in. Miles wanted to avoid the concrecte structure of the building at all costs, so he used bronze double profiles as a non-structural columns to remember the internal structure. These are visible from outside the building, and as a vertically running mullions. It is a method similar to that already used in apartment towers on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS:

We found the building amazing, because of the incredible height of 157 meters it has, with 39 floors. And if we add the dark colors in the windows, they make a strong and smart appearance to the construction. It looks straight and well-balanced from our point of view. We think it has been interesting working about this large building from Miles.