La plataforma com a llindar en l'obra de Mies i Utzon

This thesis is divided into three separate volumes, which are consistent with the indifferent order in which they could be read. Two of them are dedicated to two masters of modern architecture, Mies and Utzon, who respectively personify two major architectural currents which share with unequal intensity the first half of the twentieth century: rationalism and realism or organic architecture. The third volume presents some important platforms of the architecture of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, that shortlist of three architectural cultures which, according to Giedion, embodied the first spatial conception of architecture. This volume is presented here as an annex, as this thesis mainly analyzes various notions of platforms built during the twentieth century. But it was precisely from the reinterpretation of the platform, classical in essence, that those magnificent massive platforms of the antiquity rightly claimed their modern relevance. Both Mies and Utzon not only delimited their respective projects between two substantially horizontal layers, that of the ground and that of the roof, but also the formal characteristics of each of these episodes defined the key attributes and interests of their architecture. In both cases, however, it has been the plane of the roof which has raised more analysis and recognition: - In the case of Mies, his roofs, straight and flat without exception, have been the result of the evolution of certain structural typologies, in concrete and later on in steel, which also fulfilled a conception of programme that prioritized flexibility ahead of functionality . - In the case of Utzon, his deliberately wavy roofs, invariably of concrete, have been the most distinctive figurative feature of all his architecture, eclipsed under the impact of his most celebrated work, the Sydney Opera House. However, for the understanding of the architecture, of both Mies and Utzon, it would be erroneous not to put the episodes of their respective roofs in re
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