The Dirksen Variations: Towards a Generative Description of Mies's Courthouse Language

Abstract

A generative description of Mies van derRohe's courthouse language is presented in the form of a shape grammar. The grounding of the work is based on a set of 135 sketches produced by the office of Mies during the design process of the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse in Chicago, and documented in the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum ofModern Art. The work here postulates a set of 39 unique courthouse designs all showcasing distinct variations of the courtroom type in the Miesian language and re-casts them in two-dimensional diagrams to make their differences and similarities transparent. A series ofspatial relations between five types of spaces are extracted, including courtrooms, circulation networks, vertical cores, office spaces, and support spaces, and are deployed to specify the shape rules of the grammar. A set of conventions to specify how the two-dimensional diagrams represent three-dimensional models is briefly outlined to prepare the ground for the implementation of the grammar in a three-dimensional shape grammar interpreter.