Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 

Who is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe?

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a pioneering architect whose works – alongside Le Corbusier’s and Walter Gropius’ – defined a separate strain of modern architecture known as International Style. He was a true modernist pioneer and an iconic figure of 20th-century architecture and design. Sustained by his famous trenchant statements like ‘less is more’ and ‘God is in the details’, the textures of his Barcelona Pavilion (1929/1986), the steel-and-glass aesthetic of the Seagram Building (1956-1958) and his paradigmatic examples of domestic architecture like the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945-1951), have become some of the world’s most emblematic and widely-recognized architectural elements and structures built in the last century.

 

One of his characteristic works is Farnsworth House

Designed 1945 and eventually completed in 1951, the Farnsworth House is a bright, one-floor weekend house in what then was a rural setting by the banks of the Fox River, southeast of Chicago. The home is one of the few examples of domestic ‘Miesian architecture’ in the United States. The house embraces van der Rohe’s dedication towards the harmony between man-made structure and nature, and it is widely recognised as an iconic masterpiece of the International Style. The construction was fleckered by the conflict between Rohe and the commissioner due to the escalating construction costs that eventually led to an unfinished project and to the construction of an empty house. The home was eventually furnished as the result of the mediation of Rohe’s former employee. The client, Dr Edith Farnsworth eventually began using the house as her weekend retreat, often hosting guests who came to see now the completed work of the world-famous architect. The house currently operates as a historic house museum.