House of harmonies

Mies van der Rohe's McCormick House - one of only three houses he built on American soil - has been saved from demolition and transported to a new site where it forms the framework for the new Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois by De Stefano & Partners, uniting form and function, says Peter Wislocki.By the time Mies van der Rohe established his Chicago office, he had moved on from his pre-war domestic masterpieces - such as the Barcelona Pavilion and Tugendhat House - to altogether bigger things. Working for corporate and institutional clients, Mies evolved an architecture of ever-more- refined steel detailing which he applied to classically symmetrical conceptual designs.The Lake Shore Drive apartment twin towers are probably the best known of the buildings Mies designed in Chicago, but his adopted home city also boasts one of only three houses which he built on American soil. Robert McCormick was the client for both these buildings which, despite their vastly contrasting scales and contexts, embody remarkably similar external wall details.By a fortuitous coincidence, the McCormick House was put up for sale in 1991 - 40 years after its completion - just as the Elmhurst Fine Arts & Civic Center Foundation was evaluating options for a facility to provide gallery space for exhibits, storage, curatorial accommodation, classrooms, archives and offices for its varied constituent groups. The McCormick House's site in Prospect Avenue was not suitable for the foundation's purposes, but was sufficiently large to be considered for demolition by redevelopers. Undaunted by the obvious practical complications, the foundation purchased the building and had it (or at least its steel frame) transported to its present site in Wilder Park.The foundation's choice of architect was also telling: James R De Stefano studied under Mies before joining SOM, where his career progressed relentlessly. The Elmhurst Art Museum project is therefore not only an adaptation and extension of a minor modern masterpiece, but a very personal critique, in built form, of a master's work by one of his more distinguished pupils.De Stefano explains that "the house provides a conceptual framework for the design of the new museum. The intent here was not to mimic Mies's design, but to provide a sympathetic context for it, and allow the dialogue between the new and the old to make a richer ensemble than either might have been on their own."Rather helpfully, in 1943 Mies wrote a brief for "A Museum for a Small City", giving De Stefano an authoritative point of reference for his design in terms of both cultural and tectonic intentions. As Mies wrote, "The first problem is to establish the museum as a centre for the enjoyment, not the internment of art. In this project the barrier between the work of art and the living community is erased by a garden approach used for the display of sculpture. The type of structure which permits this is the steel frame. This construction allows the erection of a building with only three basic elements - a floor slab, columns and a roof plate."Mindful of the need not to dominate the original house, De Stefano elected to fragment the 1,400sq m museum complex into a series of pavilions. Two new blocks - housing galleries and education facilities respectively - flank the original house. The three "solid" elements are linked by what the architects describe as the "cloister" - the aforementioned Miesian sandwich of gallery, a multi-purpose room used by artists, students and other community groups, a darkroom, and specialised workshops for printmaking and ceramics. The detailing of both blocks is austere, yet there are subtle and thoughtful refinements, such as recesses in solid walls to allow glass doors to be totally unobtrusive when opened.While Miesian in concept, De Stefano's cloister does not reproduce the details of 860/ 880 Lake Shore Drive (completed just one year before its smaller domestic offspring) partly because of the high cost of procuring beautifully welded and finished steel I-sections. Instead, the 1,650mm structural grid of the house has been extended into a frame supported on cruciform columns (similar to those found in some of Mies's earlier projects) bearing a steel deck on exposed trusses.The detailing of De Stefano's buildings is straightforward - almost industrial - the steelwork merely provides the necessary support to the cleverly juxtaposed planes of clear and translucent glass, which give the cloister block a great sense of layering. The sense of continuity with the landscape beyond is strengthened by the sweeping curve of De Stefano's glazed facade. The play of transparency and translucence is carried through to smaller elements, including the minimalist suspended signage, reinforcing the integrity of the design concept. "Like the house," De Stefano explains, "the new construction seeks to make an architecture which finds expression in the basic components of the building and eliminates redundant or non-essential systems to concentrate on these fundamentals."The slightly larger of the two wings of the house has been converted for use by the museum staff, the smaller wing being more fully integrated with the public gallery spaces. The former living room serves as a small classroom with the refurbished kitchen providing a valuable catering facility. For the majority of visitors, the house is, in reality, rather peripheral to the overall museum experience - but this is perhaps inevitable, given the impossibility of creating generous and flexible galleries within its modest envelope. It is questionable whether a building never intended for public use should be expected to serve such a purpose, and whether its fabric would withstand more intensive wear.For an architect whose career has been mostly focused on much larger, commercial projects, the modest size of the Elmhurst Art Museum provided a welcome opportunity to concentrate on often neglected key details. "Every aspect of the project, from the landscape design to the graphic identity programme, was co-ordinated to allow the architecture to support the aesthetic intentions of the project," De Stefano believes.Inevitably, some of the power of the McCormick House has been diluted by the museum development; and the contemporary aluminium glazing sections, required to meet current thermal insulation standards, lack the elegance of the original glazing. De Stefano's external solar shades would never be described as fussy or heavy-handed were they not juxtaposed with the severe minimalism of the Mies house next door. On balance, however, the Elmhurst Museum and its architect should be congratulated for finding a very appropriate and sustainable use for a small but significant building, and creating a generous and enjoyable arts complex.