Where the clouds break. Lever House. New York 1950

  • Author: Sergio de Miguel García
  • Type of research: PhD (Doctoral Thesis)
  • Lines of research: Spaces and Types, Masters and Rethorics
  • Director: Javier Frechilla Camoiras
  • Defense: 2016 January
  • Research group: Teoría y Crítica del Proyecto y de la Arquitectura Moderna y Contemporánea
Pragmatismo
Modernidad
Nueva York
Idealización
Rascacielos

In the postwar victorious America, origin of the new configuration of the Western World, a unique work will represent the abstraction of the universal values ​​of modern architecture. The construction of the Lever House in the New York of 1950 would not only bring about a turning point in the history of American skyscrapers and corporate architecture, in turn define a new paradigm from which generalized models for building the future. The timely confluence between pragmatic accents of the American capitalist world and the positivistic formulations of the modern European architecture, conveniently collected as constructed manifesto of the International Style, definitively accounted to resolve that old American dilemma of how should be the adequate representation of the Modern corporate building. The study will focus on the value of metaphor, conversation and the opportunity of a work whose projection widely transcended the aspirations of its creators. Causing an strong idealization would reach to nowadays.