Biographie de Detlef Mertins
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is one of the twentieth century's most influ-ential architects. His most well-known projects include the Barcelona Pavilion in Spain (1929) ; the Seagram Building in New York (1954-6) ; the Farnsworth House (1945-50), 860-880 Lakeshore Drive (1945-51) and the IIT Campus (1939-58), all in and around Chicago ; and the New National Gallery in Berlin (1962-8). These are only a few of Mies's pavilions, houses, skyscrapers and campuses, which all epitomized a radically new structural and spatial clarity.
Detlef Mertins (1954-2011) made lasting contributions to the theory and history of modernism in architecture, art, philosophy and urbanism. From 2002 to 2007, he was Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He also taught at the University of Toronto and, as a visiting professor, at Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University and Rice University.
Among Mertins' many published books are Modernity Un bound (2011) ; G : An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923-1926 (2010), co-edited with Michael Jennings ; The Presence of Mies (1994) and Metropolitan Mutations : The Architecture of Emerging Public Spaces (1989). Mertins also published numerous essays in scholarlyjournals and anthologies, as well as critical writings on contemporary architecture.