Dan Kiley and Classical Modernism: Mies in Leaf

Abstract

The elements that comprise landscapes by Dan Kiley—the allée, the bosk, the orchard, and the lawn—have recurred as basic typologies for almost as long as the designed landscape itself. Rather than the constituent elements, however, it is the underlying spatial idea—reinforced by collateral departures from absolute rigidity in its planning geometry—that animates Kiley’s landscape designs and roots them firmly in the twentieth century. In contrast to the classical norm, Kiley’s landscapes shun any absolute congruence among the stacked layers of ground plane, understory, and canopy. Avoiding a neat termination at a suggested edge—such as a path or the bed—they overstep their boundaries, merging with one another as a more dynamic composition. We might term this property slippage, here taken as an extension beyond the defined or implied boundary: a purposeful imprecision in aligning elements in plan and in section. A comparison between the work of the architect Mies van der Rohe and Dan Kiley reveals similarities and differences in both order and spatial ideas, and further explores the idea of a classical modernism.