Later alterations to the building The house was renovated in 2001.4 The garden wall, balcony, flat tile roofing and chimney are all reconstructions. The enclosure of the loggia with perimeter glazing, which had been undertaken at an earlier date, was retained and the original condition was not reinstated. The original enclosed staircase and dumb waiter was replaced with an open staircase and the entrance door was changed. Most of the original fittings, with the exception of a few elements in the attic, have also been lost. As the original planning records and working drawings no longer exist and the published plans are idealised plans that differ from the building survey, it is not possible to conclusively determine the original plans of the lower floor and attic. The building as seen from the present This “general space” that Mies created right at the beginning of his career marks the first use of what Mies would later term “universal space”: an architecture independent of a specific function. As he explained, “I have always liked large rooms in which I can do as I please […]. I said: ‘Make your spaces big enough, man, so that you can walk around in them freely, and not just in one predetermined direction!’ […] We don’t know at all whether people will do with them what we expect them to. Functions are not so clear or so constant; they change faster than the building.”5 Mies had evidently wished to achieve precisely this spatial constellation and precisely these proportions. The ratio of the width to length of the hall is 2:3, as is the ratio of the height to width. The alcoves adjoining the hall have the same proportions, as does the entrance vestibule and the windows and opening onto the loggia. From his later buildings, we know that Mies never left the proportions to chance, declaring that “the artistic expresses itself in the proportions”.6 His floor plan, however, could only be achieved with considerable constructional effort, as the spatial disposition conflicted with the structure of the building. The dimensions and orientation of the hall could only be achieved without the use of columns by employing a concealed supporting construction. Hidden columns bear a hidden I-beam on which the transverse gable wall of the upper storey rests. This expensive supplementary construction shows how far Mies was from his later ideal of structural clarity. But it also shows how uncompromisingly he wished to realise this particular plan within the confines of this unassuming building type. The Riehl House can also be analysed according to Gottfried Semper’s theory of the four elements of architecture. In the nineteenth century, Semper characterised architecture according to four primordial elements – hearth, roof, enclosure and mound – each of which he related to a specific material. In the Riehl House, the hearth is related to the materials metal and ceramics out of which the “fireplace” is made. Although this is actually just a radiator screen, its altar-like treatment and placement lend it the status of a fireplace. With regard to the enclosure, Semper noted that “the word Wand [wall] has the same root as Gewand [garment]. They describe the textile or fabric of the walls that clothe the space.”7 Even when walls were later made of masonry, panelled with wood or clad with sheets of marble, Semper argued that they still represented a non-structural enclosure that derived from the textile fabric of old. Although only visible in the tectonic articulation, and only hinted at discreetly, the principle of the sep aration of structure from non-structural infill is visible in the fine profiling of the pilasters of the façade. On the garden frontage, these infill panels are actually omitted in a manner akin to a halftimbered structure. Finally, this elemental approach to the building design is most apparent in its relationship to the topography: the building is firmly anchored with the site by a substantial mound.
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1 From a conversation with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the documentary film “Mies van der Rohe” by Georgia van der Rohe, 1986. 2 Hermann Muthesius, Das Englische Haus, Berlin 1904, vol. 3 (English-language edition: Hermann Muthesius, The English House. Volume III: The Interior, London 2007). 3 Ibid., pp. 170–173. 4 The house was renovated by the architects Heiko Folkerts together with conservation consulting from Jörg Limberg. See the contribution by Folkerts and Limberg in: Johannes Cramer and Dorothée Sack (eds.), Mies van der Rohe: Frühe Bauten – Probleme der Erhaltung – Probleme der Bewertung, Petersberg 2004, pp. 27–55. 5 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in conversation with Ulrich Conrads in 1964, produced on a phonograph record, Mies in Berlin, Bauwelt, Berlin 1966. 6 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Manuscript of a “radio broadcast” on 17 Aug. 1931, in: Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word – Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, Cambridge, Mass. 1991, p. 311. 7 Gottfried Semper, Die vier Elemente der Baukunst, Braunschweig 1851, p. 57 (The Four Elements of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass. 2011).