Freiraum: ideas of nature and freedom in the work of Mies van der Rohe

Human action is shaping the earth on a geological scale. How can architects respond to the present-day imperative of maintaining liberty for the individual within a “landscape” understood as a global entity? The work of Mies van der Rohe offers an architectural concept that is characterised by a great sense of freedom, both spatially and intellectually. In providing openness and an unprecedented degree of spatial expanse, modernity’s ambivalent condition of supreme freedom and inherent uncertainty is expressed. By asserting creative liberty on contested territory, architecture has an urgent part to play in humankind’s perpetual effort to actively establish its freedom.