The exhibition of the pre-American work of Mies van der Rohe at the Whitechapel Gallery until 2 March covers half a career - he was 52 when, in 1938, he moved to the States. Despite that, it follows a pattern you find in the early careers of most advanced 19th or 20th-century architects: suburban villas and housing, which proved you could see a job through, and competition entries which showed how you might handle big projects. Other ideas could, with luck, be tried out on temporary exhibition pavilions. Mies van der Rohe 1905-38 is dominated by photographs and models of built houses, unbuilt schemes, exhibition work and competition entries. The big buildings were still to come.

LRB 23 January 2003 | PDF Download