2015 Directory

36 WYOMING ARCHITECTURE .15 | www.aia-wyoming.org W e have recently notified by Bob Connelly at Wyoming PBS to feature two Wyoming buildings in an upcom- ing “Main Street Wyoming” episode and will be aired in conjunction with the national PBS production of a series called “10 That Changed the World”. One of the buildings is the Resor family pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (his only project in Wyoming). Unfortunately, for various reasons, construction on the project was halted, mainly by the start of World War II due to a lack of building materials and at some point what had been construct- ed was washed out by a flood. We have received three grants to help off-set the cost of building a 3-D computer model to create an animation of the building in the natural site. With current technology we can actually put the model in the site to create a realistic animation to be included in the episode. We interviewed Stephen Dynia, FAIA, to speak about the significance of Mies van der Rohe in American architecture and Elizabeth Resor, a family member and studied architecture at Yale as an undergraduate, to speak of the stories describing how his family was the main reason that Mies van der Rohe came to America. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Mies”, (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) was an award winning German-American architect who helped create an architectural style with extreme clarity and simplicity using modern materials of exposed industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. He strove toward archi- tecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of flowing open space. He called his buildings “skin and bones” architecture. He sought a rational approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design and lead to buildings like the Seagram building in New York and the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive building in Chicago. He is often associated with his quotation of the aphorisms, "less is more" and "God is in the details". His architecture would go on to influence almost all high-rise building in the United States and Wyoming Special Projects BY CORNELIUS KINSEY, AIA