The Titanic

The groundbreaking innovations of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe left a lasting impact on both the practice and teaching of architecture in the United States, especially in Chicago. As director of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Mies stressed the importance of bold, clean designs based on structure, materials, and function. Stanley Tigerman was among the many architects schooled in the Miesian tradition, and he based much of his work in the 1960s and 1970s on the designs of the famed architect. Tigerman’s restless curiosity and iconoclastic spirit, however, led him to question the authority and durability of Mies’s program. The Titanic is a conceptual project that was meant to provoke architects to contend with the Mies legacy, challenging them to choose sides: move beyond Mies or remain cemented to the past. The photocollage pitches Mies’s Crown Hall (1950–56), one of the architect’s most iconic and revered designs, into the deep. Tigerman mailed copies of the work to members of the architectural establishment, including an offer of a one-way ticket on the Titanic. Although the title of the work portends the end of Mies’s dominance, Tigerman acknowledged that many would see the building as rising back to the surface, ever triumphant.