Training architecture through Mies' houses: The Lemke House in Berlin

The Lemke Haus, located in the Berlin-Lichtenberg District in front of the Obersee Lake, is the latest house built in Germany by Mies van der Rohe before he moved to the US (1938), at a time when he was also Director of the Bauhaus. The construction, in spite of its simplicity, represents a milestone in the Mies' architectural investigation because it synthesizes and sublimates the experimentations already started with the Brick House in Potsdam-Neubabelsberg (1924, not built), the Lange Haus and the Esters Haus in Krefeld (1927-1930), in which the issues of materials, fluidity of space and the relationship between inside and outside are linked to a deep reflection on the form in line with the investigations of the artistic avant-garde of that period. Since 1977 the Lemke Haus is protected as an element of cultural and historical heritage and nowadays, after a restoration completed in 2002, is currently a contemporary art gallery named "Mies van der Rohe House". This paper offers a typological, historical and technological analysis of the Lemke Haus, based on a still-life metric survey and subsequent new original drawings produced in the framework of the Architectural Design Studio activities within Architectural Ms Degree Courses.i. The study of the Lemke Haus represents an exemplary case of educational project in the field of architectural constructions, fundamental to understand the didactic value of the Mies' work and very important to learn, through such a small building, the deep meaning of the Mies van der Rohe's experience in Berlin and the delicate relationship between form and construction developed by the German Master.