Alfred Caldwell was among the first full- time American professors Mies van der Rohe hired at the Illinois... Show moreAlfred Caldwell was among the first full- time American professors Mies van der Rohe hired at the Illinois
Institute of Technology (IIT). Many have admired Mies’s architecture since the 1920s, and know that his ideas
were also transmitted as a professor, first at the Bauhaus in Europe and then as Director of the Department of
Architecture at IIT. Caldwell, a practicing landscape architect and protégé of Jens Jensen, is perhaps less
widely known, but was a major influence on IIT’s program especially in the areas of construction, landscape, and
architectural history. Caldwell completed a Master of Science in City Planning with a thesis entitled The City
in the Landscape: A Preface for Planning, which can be considered a manifesto of both his professional ideas and
IIT’s planning pedagogy. In addition to his own works, Caldwell collaborated with Mies and architect Ludwig
Hilberseimer, Director of City and Regional Planning at IIT and former Head of Building Theory at the Bauhaus,
on the design of built works which left behind artifacts representing the ideal of “the city in the landscape.”
This communication examines the broader perspective on urban design influenced by the symbiotic disciplines of
architecture, city-regional planning and landscape as manifested in the individual and collaborative built work
and pedagogy of Caldwell, Hilberseimer, and Mies. Originally published as paper #1.01 in volume 1 of the conference proceedings of the EAAE-ARCC International
Conference & 2nd Valencia International Biennial. Show less
