Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies) (March 27, 1886 - August 17, 1969) was an architect and designer.

Career in America

Mies settled in Chicago, Illinois where he was appointed as head of the architecture school at Chicago's Armour Institute of Technology (later renamed Illinois Institute of Technology - IIT). One of his conditions for taking this position was that he would be able to redesign the campus. Some of his most famous buildings still stand there, including Crown Hall, the home of IIT's School of Architecture. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen.

Related Topics:
Chicago, Illinois - Illinois Institute of Technology - Crown Hall - 1944 - Naturalized citizen

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Between 1946 and 1951 Mies van der Rohe designed and built the Farnsworth House, a weekend retreat outside of Chicago for an independent professional woman, Dr. Edith Farnsworth. This small masterpiece showed the world that exposed structural steel and glass were materials worthy of great architecture. The glass pavilion is raised above a floodplain next to the Fox River on exposed H-shape steel columns set in parallel rows. Suspended between between the columns are three horizontal steel-edged slabs (terrace, floor, and roof). The pristine white stucture defines an interior space enclosed in full height glass, letting nature and light envelop the interior space. A wood paneled core (housing mechanical equipment, kitchen, fireplace, and toilets) is positioned within the open space to define the living, dining and sleeping spaces without using actual walls or rooms. No partitions touch the surrounding glass enclosure. Full height draperies on a perimeter track provide shading and privacy when and where desired. The house has been described as sublime, a temple hovering between heaven and earth, a poem, a work of art. The Farnsworth House and its 60 acre wooded site was purchased at auction for $7.5 million by preservation groups in 2004 and is now operated by the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois as a public museum. The influential building spawned hundreds of modernist glass houses, most notably the Glass House by Philip Johnson, located near New York City and now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The iconic Farnsworth House is considered among Mies' greatest works, an embodiement of his principles of order, clarity and simplicity.

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During 1951-1952, Mies designed and built the McCormick House, located in Elmhurst, Illinois (15 miles west of the Chicago Loop), for real-estate developer Robert McCormick as a summer home. Conceptually based on one floor of his famous Lake Shore Drive towers, it served as a prototype for a series of row-hourses to be built in Melrose Park, Illinois, even though they were never realized. The house exisits today as a part of the Elmhurst Art Museum.http://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org.

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In 1958 Mies van der Rohe built what has been regarded as the ultimate expression of the International Style of architecture, the Seagram Building in New York. Mies was chosen by the daughter of the client, Phyllis Bronfman Lambert, who has become an architectural figure in her own right. The Seagram Building is a large glass work, but controversially, the architect chose to set the structure back, include a massive plaza and fountain, and create an open space in Park Avenue. Mies had to argue with the Bronfman's bankers about exploiting all of the plat. More controversially Mies included external I-beams that were not structurally necessary but that 'expressed' the structure, touching off a conversation about whether Mies had or had not committed the crime of ornamentation. Philip Johnson had a role in designing the plaza and the Four Seasons restaurant. The Seagrams Building is said to also be the first major 'fast-track' construction process, when design and construction are done concurrently.

Related Topics:
International Style - Seagram Building - New York - Phyllis Bronfman Lambert - Park Avenue - Philip Johnson

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Mies designed and built many modern high-rises in Chicago's downtown and elsewhere. Some of his credits include the Federal Building (1959), IBM Plaza (1966) and 860-880 Lake Shore Drive (1948-52), the first building to use an all glass and steel curtain wall in its construction, the hallmark of the modern skyscraper. (Ironically, Mies himself lived in a pre-World War II building during his whole residence in Chicago.) Two last major projects were the Toronto-Dominion Centre in 1967 in Toronto, Ontario, the first of the bank skyscrapers to be built in that city, and the Neue Nationalgalerie art museum in Berlin.

Related Topics:
High-rise - IBM Plaza - Lake Shore Drive - Skyscraper - Toronto-Dominion Centre - Toronto, Ontario - Neue Nationalgalerie

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Mies played a significant role as an educator, believing his architectural ideas could be taught. He worked personally and intensively on prototype solutions, and then allowed his students, both in school and his office, to develop derivative solutions for specific projects under his guidance. But when none were able to match his genius, he agonized about where he had gone wrong.

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Famous for his poetic aphorisms 'Less is More' and 'God is in the details', Mies sought to create clear, simple and ordered spaces through an architecture based on exposing the inherent qualities of materials and the expression of structure. Over the last twenty years of his life, Mies achieved his vision of a monumental 'skin and bones' architecture. His later works provide a fitting denouement to a life dedicated to the idea of a universal architecture for the modern era.

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Mies' grandson Dirk Lohan is also a prominent Chicago architect. Lohan worked with Mies on the New National Gallery, designed his grandfather's grave site in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, and restored the Farnsworth House after a flood in 1997.

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