Online conference presented by Fritz Neumeyer
March 27, 2021
Closing conference of the exhibition Souto de Moura — Memory, Projects, Works
No architect, nor his creations, has complete meaning alone. As it is the privilege of the greatest creations, Souto de Moura’s work grows with time, and continuously unveils new clues for understanding the relations between the works themselves and their continuities, hesitations and contradictions. The relations between these works and the works of other authors—known or anonymous, near or far, recent or old but all "contemporary”, and all of them subject matter for further studies—also become clearer.
Mies van der Rohe’s works and thoughts are surely among Souto de Moura’s major influences. Fritz Neumeyer is one of the world’s most relevant scholars on Mies of the last decades. His major work Mies van der Rohe - das kunstlose Wort: Gedanken zur Baukunst (1986, Siedler, Berlin) is a major reference to all studies related to Mies. But Neumeyer’s writings about Mies continue since then to constantly unveil extraordinary aspects about this major figure of the last century.
How did Mies develop his architectural thinking throughout his career? What did his lessons give to us? Where and how do they still shine in today’s architectural production?
These are surely relevant questions at a time when some architectures seem to have partially lost some of the essential meaning. We believe that both the exhibition on Souto de Moura’s great work—Souto de Moura — Memory, Projects, Works—and this final lecture by Fritz Neumeyer are a unique opportunity to think about Mies’s lessons and the paths they open for the future of architecture.
Nuno Graça Moura, co-curator of the exhibition Souto de Moura — Memory, Projects, Works
Join us on our Facebook next Saturday, March 27 at 5pm GMT.
Fritz Neumeyer
1993–2012, Professor and Chair of Architectural Theory at the Technical University of Berlin. 1992, Jean Labatut Professor, School of Architecture, Princeton University. 1989–1992, Professor of the History of Architecture, University of Dortmund. 1987–1988, Fellow at the Getty Center for History of Arts and The Humanities, Santa Monica. 1978 Doctorate in Architecture.
Visiting professorships: SCIARC, Santa Monica, California; GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge Mass.; University of Leuven, Belgium; Institut d´Humanitats de Barcelona, Spain; Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.
Numerous publications on the theory and history of architecture, including the following books: The Artless Word. Mies Van Der Rohe On The Building Art, Cambridge/London 1991 (Berlin 1986, Madrid 1995; Paris 1996; Milan 1996, Seoul 2009; Berlin 2016; Shanghai 2020) / Friedrich Gilly 1772-1800. Essays on Architecture, Santa Monica 1994 (Berlin 1997) / Der Klang der Steine. Nietzsches Architekturen, Berlin 2001 / Quellentexte zur Architekturtheorie, Munich 2002 / Hans Kollhoff. Das architektonische Argument. Texte und Interviews, Zürich 2010 / Cos’è una facciata? Imparare da Alberti—What is a Facade? Learning from Alberti, Azzate (Varese) 2015 / The Lost, Last Words of Mies van der Rohe. The Lohan-Tapes from 1969, Berlin 2020. Ausgebootet: Mies van der Rohe und das Bauhaus 1933—Outside The Bauhaus. Mies van der Rohe and Berlin 1933, Berlin 2020
BPI and Foundation La Caixa are patrons of the exhibition Souto de Moura — Memory, Projects, Works.
