Podium and grid: links between project and city

A common denominator of the projects of buildings in height is the use of a platform or podium on
which lies the volume with vertical predominance. Following this logic, we could separate these projects
into two major components: the vertical volume that, in general, houses an office program governed by
strict laws, which acquires a more abstract character in its relation to the context; and the podium /
platform, basement that also houses, in general, a program that supports the operation of the building,
parking lots and areas of mechanical machinery, and which is in close relationship with the site where
the project is implemented.

Between these two components are established a series of relationships that define the project as an
own system linked to its context, thanks to the use of the podium as a direct link between the site, with
the characteristics that are its own -orientation, unevenness, limits- and the vertical volume that rests
on it; both connected through a public square that mediates between these two elements of the project
and with the city as an extension of it. This base absorbs the differences of levels present in the ground
and, in addition, generates a single horizontal surface that allows to maintain a same height in all the
elements that are disposed on it, which optimizes the encounter between these elements at a
constructive level.

Both components, podium and tower, are arranged through a grid that manifests itself in all its
elements: bearing structure, construction elements, light between columns, the quartering of the
pavement or the distances between vertical uprights in the facades. This grid is a constant in all Mies
projects and modifies its dimensions according to the program and the site where the project is
developed, which makes it clear that the important thing is not so much the measure but the use of this
resource as such. In fact, the grid was able to extend to virtually all areas of the project, 118 even
covering the same city, and transgressing the limits with which the project traditionally bounded.

The Miesian principle of formalization aimed to free things from their isolation and transform them into
elements of a system of order that gave the parties their highest meaning [...]. Mies projected a
cadence, whose distant spatial rhythm freed the architectural elements from the corresponding limits of
their existence, to let them out into a larger relationship, which was built above them.119

In the projects of low buildings, the podium continued to be used but less frequently. Although these
projects were arranged on horizontal surfaces, many of them rose above the natural terrain to generate
semi-buried levels and allow the entry of natural light, an operation that would not have fulfilled its
objective if a solid element had been used as a base. .

However, there were cases in which there were atypical situations and the operations changed
according to the requirements of the program. In the project for the United States Consulate in São
Paulo, the requested program called for new ways of approaching the relationship between the building
and the land. Even when a natural surface of the land was available that was flat, unevenness was
generated both in the east sector and the north, which gave rise to accesses that allowed to separate
the program and the functions of the building. At the same time, the building was raised above the
ground to generate a semi-buried level and access was created through a stairway located in the three
central bays of the main facade, with an intermediate platform, in the manner of the Crown Hall in
Chicago.120

In the Friedrich Krupp office project in Essen, a solid volume served as the base upon which the program
settled. According to David Spaeth, this podium served to house the "parking lot, machinery equipment,
a kitchen, a restaurant and the auxiliary facilities that these spaces will need" .121 The evidently rugged
terrain and the use of a podium that houses the program evidences the preferences of van der Rohe
when developing his projects.

In the projects of buildings of a single structural light the podium was used in the same way as in the
projects of buildings in height: a solid basement that absorbed the level differences and harbored part
of the program and a load-bearing structure that rested on top of it. this foundation. From this point of
view both archetypes are very similar in relation to the relationship established between the
architectural object and its link with the site.

337. View from the southeast corner where the platform on which the One Charles Center Tower rests
in Baltimore, United States.

Source: CHS - Available at: http://goo.gl/dZCVpQ

338. View of the podium that saves the difference in level and on which the IBM Dificio is based.

Source: Author

339. View from Sigismundi Street, New National Gallery in Berlin, Germany.

Source: CHS - Available at: http://goo.gl/iWCKzg

340. Foreshortening of the rear facade of the project for the office building Friedrich Krupp in Essen,
Germany.

Source: CHS - Available at: http://goo.gl/SVMhK0

341. Rear facade, parking lot and access to the auditorium of the United States Consulate in São Paulo,
Brazil.

Source: CHS - Available at: http://goo.gl/G1UW76

118. "The modern building has an administrative limit that does not usually coincide with its spatial
confinement: in effect, the relationships that define it only become exhausted where the gaze no longer
reaches. Therefore, the modern building, more than a delimited and concluded object, is an urban
episode, by definition: either because the building is posed as a peculiar universe that assumes the
environment through its position -Le Corbusier-, or because the architecture itself it is proposed as a
way of inhabiting the world, without other barriers than those that determine the protection and
climate control -Mies van der Rohe. "Piñón, Theory of the project, 146.

119. Neumeyer, Mies van der Rohe: the word without artifice, 94.

120. The "semperiana" analysis that Campo Baeza makes about the relationship between the
stereotomic podium and the tectonic platform at the access points of the Mies van der Rohe projects
may be of interest. Alberto Campo Baeza, Stereotomic and tectonic: Alberto Campo Baeza teaching unit
(Madrid: Maireia Libros, 2001), 18

121. Spaeth, Mies van der Rohe, 180

Playground
In the projects included in the study period, we observed that the patio acquired a less conceptual
dimension. It differed, in this sense, with previous projects -such as the patio-houses- in which the house
was in an enclosure delimited by walls and the courtyards occupied the perimeter of the plot to
structure the interior space from outside.

In later orders the patio was used to solve a need: to bring light to the interior of the buildings. The
courtyard was generally surrounded by office spaces around its perimeter, and was also used as an
element to separate different uses in the same building, as in the case of Meredith Memorial Hall or the
US consulate in Brazil.

In the case of the Brown wing, in Houston, the patio acquired a peripheral position and was used as a
finish at both ends of the wing to allow natural light to enter the office area without compromising their
privacy. This was also the case in the New National Gallery in Berlin: the sculpture garden was created as
a finishing touch for the temporary exhibition hall, converted into an extension of the internal space,
defined by walls that opened the space to the sky.

347. Study of the configuration of the patio for the project of the consulate of the United States in São
Paulo, Brazil.

Source: Mies van der Rohe, The Mies van der Rohe Archive, Vol. 17, 305-308.

348. Patio that separates the office area from the classroom area in the Meredith Memorial Hall building
in Des Moines, United States.

Source: CHS - Available at: http://goo.gl/cgBIsS