David Haid and the Mannheim Theater of Mies van der Rohe

This article investigates the role played by David N. Haid -a graduate student at IIT and assistant in Mies van der Rohe's office -developed in the National Theater project, which was submitted to the competition announced by the city of Mannheim in 1952 and decided in the spring of 1953. The archival work and the method of comparative analysis reveal two important aspects. Firstly, that Mies van der Rohe's project for the competition on invitation is contemporary with the final master's project, entitled An Arts Center, which Haid defended in June 1953, a master thesis supervised by Mies, as stated in his preface. Secondly, the resemblance between Haid's proposal for a multi-purpose arts center and Mies's Mannheim Theater is very evident, with the two projects being identical in almost every aspect: metrics, proportion, structure, and even the construction of the two models and the staging of their photographs. The temporal and architectural coincidence of the two works reveals the decisive role that David Haid played in this singular project, hitherto only attributed to Mies van der Rohe.