Completed in 1958, the Seagram Building brought Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's architectural discipline to a 38-story office tower in New York. Philip Johnson collaborated on the project and its interiors, with Kahn & Jacobs serving as architect of record. The bronze-and-glass elevation presents a repeated arrangement of narrow vertical members, windows and dark horizontal bands.
The tower stands behind an open plaza on Park Avenue. This space gives the building room to be seen from the pavement and turns the approach into part of its composition. Against the surrounding city, the broad foreground and the continuous grid make its proportions particularly legible. The building's public presence begins before the visitor reaches the entrance.
The bronze members visible on the curtain wall are architectural elements, rather than the tower's load-bearing frame. Severud Associates designed the steel structure and lateral systems behind this carefully ordered exterior. That distinction helps explain the building: structure, enclosure and appearance work together, but the visible pattern is also a deliberate architectural expression.
Edith Farnsworth House, Plano
