Tactically ambiguous performance: the 1:1 model of Mies’s Krefeld Golf Clubhouse Project by Robbrecht en Daem architecten

Abstract

A temporary and fragmentary 1:1 model of Mies van der Rohe’s unexecuted golf clubhouse project for Krefeld was designed by Robbrecht en Daem architecten and built largely in plywood near to the project's original site in the summer of 2013. This article analyses the project against the background of the debate on contemporary facsimile monument reconstructions in Germany and beyond. It argues that the design of this 1:1 model, which is not a replica nor a reconstruction, employs particular design strategies to enact the absent building in an ambiguous and self-critical way. Depending on their position in and around the pavilion, visitors alternately experienced this structure as an immersive evocation of Miesian architecture or as a self-exposing scenographic device. The theatricality of this alternation is compared to the spatio-temporal experience of tratteggio restoration techniques and to conceptual approaches to 1:1 (re)materialisations in architecture and art exhibitions. This theatrical alternation is valued as a critical complexification on the image-materiality axis of reconstructions, challenging the polarised positions in the debate about the (conditions of) legitimacy of new-old-monuments.