Ask anyone to name a great modern architect and a few names will come up repeatedly. One of
these people is LudwigMies van der Rohe. As one of the brilliant architects of the twentieth
century, he made huge strides in the field of architecture and opened many doors for future
designers. Never meaning to draw publicity to his ideas or himself, his ability to produce
architectural statements of such overwhelming precision and simplicity created a major revelation
in society. Throughout his life, Mies encountered many circumstances that influenced his style
and characteristics as a building designer. During the eighty-three years of his life, each event
slowly culminated to his mastery of the world of modern architecture.
Ludwig Mies was born in Aachen, Germany in 1886. He lived there for twenty years with his
parents. His father worked as a mason and gave Mies a sufficient knowledge of building
materials. Although he was only given rudimentary schooling as a child, at age nineteen Mies had
acquired more valid knowledge than many architects would have after years of training and
apprenticeship. He described his education as follows: "I had no conventional architectural
education. I worked under a few good architects. I read a few good books. That's about it."
Mies' early life was average in all aspects; however, the one trait that set him apart from all others
and led him to historic prominence was his will of enormous proportions.
In 1905, Mies moved with his family to Berlin. There he worked for Bruno Paul, an art-nouveau
architect and furniture designer. This earned Mies his first architectural commission at age
twenty-one, the Riehl House. Two years later, he joined Peter Behren's design practice where he
met master architects Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. During his time with Behren, Mies
assisted in designing the German Embassy in St. Petersburg. Still looking to gain individual
recognition as an architect, he was inspired by Behren's Turbine Factory, also in St. Petersburg.
Its huge hall with steel-arched frames and piers of concrete resembled a poetic image of strength
and power that Mies would soon bring into his work. The first suggestion of his independent
creativeness was evident when he designed the Kroller House project for The Hague in 1911. It
never went beyond the mock-up stage, but it gave Mies an opportunity to go beyond Behren
without using any borrowed styles from the past.
The very next year, Mies left Behren's practice and established his own studio in Berlin. He also
got married. During this time the architectural designs and elegant neo-classical buildings of Karl
Friedrich Schinkel became a well of inspiration for Mies, who borrowed his ideas until the late
1920's. The majority of his early designs were highly speculative and experimental, showing signs
of his search for a new and innovative style of architecture. Although Mies was still a classicist in
terms of form, it was apparent that he was becoming more and more interested in structure, an
element that he is known as the master of today.
When he returned to Berlin after a few years of military service in the German army, he came
back to a world full of upheavals in art. There was new light shining on expressionism, cubism,
and society's welcoming reactions to all of it. It was in this atmosphere that Mies made the final
break with his classical manner of the past in his architecture. This became recognizable when he
sketched his Glass Skyscraper projects in 1921. The first of his designs was an all-glass tower
reaching twenty stories high. This daring and imaginative idea was surpassed by another one of
his drawings one year later. An even more radical thirty-story building showed a complex of free
forms enclosed by a continuous curtain of glass. His sketches were exceptionally innovative
since nothing before had ever been designed solely out of glass. These ideas suddenly pushed
Mies into the forefront of the modernist movement and laid the foundation for designing glass and
metal skyscrapers today. His models of steel frames and glass walls were just the beginning of
what was to come in his architectural style.
At the same time that Mies created the Glass Skyscraper projects, his marriage also came to an
end. It was then that he also decided to change his last name. He had never been fond of "Mies,"
which was translated in German as "poor" or "wretched." In search for a more professional name,
he changed it to Mies van der Rohe, adding a version of his mother's maiden name. He felt this
was an appropriate alteration if he was going to be known for the strength and power of his
buildings. By 1924 however, he still had yet to independently design a single important modern
building. During the years of World War I, his work consisted mainly of publishing, exhibiting,
and discussing projects. By 1925 his astonishing projects had gained him sufficient recognition
resulting in many private and public clients.
In 1926 he was appointed vice president of Deutcher Werkbund. That same year he designed a
monument to the martyred German communists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. He
displayed his great knowledge of materials with his use of superimposed and cantilevered masonry
and brick. This project was a highlight during the time of Mies' work with brick villas and
monuments that became a distinct milestone in his career. Other brick buildings he successfully
designed were the Wolf House in Guber, 1926; the Hermann Lange and Esters Houses in Krefeld,
1930; and the Lemcke House in Berlin, 1933. His brick houses and monuments from the 1920's
and 30's remain the least known and publicized aspects of his career.
1928 marked the take-off point for Mies' architecture when he was chosen to design the German
Pavillion, his most famous early work, at the Barcelona International Exhibition. Since money
was not an issue regarding the Pavillion's construction, Mies built it with travertine, marble, glass,
onyx, and steel. By using the most precious materials to any architect, Mies proved that he
wanted the exhibit to be the Pavillion itself, not a display inside of it. He also designed the
chrome and leather Barcelona chair to be used by visiting royalty at the Exhibition, which later
became a twentieth century icon. Critics have claimed that Mies did not fulfill any functional
problems with the Pavillion, but Mies' response was backed by architectural history: "Buildings
have a long life and usually outlive their original function and must adapt themselves to different
uses. The only permanent ingredient a building can be expected to possess is beauty." Most
likely no one will remember whether or not there was a display inside the Pavillion, or what
functional purpose the Parthenon served, if any. All that will be acknowledged is the brilliance of
the architects and their exceptional structures.
In 1930 Mies became the director of the Bauhaus School of Design in Dessau, a major center of
twentieth-century architectural modernism. That same year he designed the Tugendhat House in
Brno, Czechoslovakia, another distinctive milestone in his career. It was the first glass house
allowing nature's trees and landscapes to form the visual interior boundaries instead of thick,
opaque walls. Just as Le Corbusier had the Villa Savoye and Frank Lloyd Wright had the Robie
House as a career-defining structure, Mies had the Tugendhat House to represent the residential
side of his career. Many who criticized the lack of color used in his buildings often failed to see
how he used the resources of nature to make his architecture vibrant with life and color through
their glass walls. By this time in the early 1930's Mies was recognized both at home and abroad as
Germany's greatest architect, as well as one of the world's leading architectural figures. Mies'
motto of "less is more" not only typified him as a man of few words, but also described the
methods of his work, distilling ideas to the point of ultimate purity. That well-known phrase also
became the essence of twentieth-century architecture. In order to broaden his horizons even
further, Mies moved to the United States and established an office in Chicago in 1937. Soon after
arriving in the states, his well-known reputation landed him a job as the director of architecture at
the Illinois Institute of Technology for twenty years. Here Mies had the opportunity to train a new
generation of American architects and at the same time develop a master plan for the IIT campus
by designing twenty buildings.
Throughout Mies' architectural career, he designed well over 200 buildings and projects, not to
mention the ones that never made it past the drawing stages. A large number of his works were
done within the last twenty years of his life. In 1950 he created the Lake Shore Drive Apartments,
which Chicagoans called the "glass houses." The twin 26-story apartment towers influenced
architects everywhere and eventually changed the look of almost every American city. One year
later he designed the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, which is often seen as the culmination
of his residential architecture. "The Farnsworth house is, in all likelihood, the most complete
statement of glass-and-steel, skin-and-bones architecture Mies or anyone else will ever be able to
make. It is, also, the ultimate in universality, the ultimate in precision and polish, the ultimate in
the crystallization of an idea." Although the Farnsworth House may be his most well known
residential project, the Seagram Building he designed in 1958 may very well be his greatest
architectural triumph. Being the only building in New York City designed by Mies, it epitomizes
the ideals of the modernist movement of architecture. Set back one hundred feet from the street,
this masterwork of Mies and fellow architect Phillip Johnson has drawn many skeptical opinions
about its "waste of space" with the large plaza. In Mies' opinion, "a building deserves to be
walked up to, not just driven into: for nobody dashing into an entrance lobby from an automobile
portico will ever experience the full drama of a skyscraper." Aside from its controversial plaza,
the rest of the building is what makes it so exceptional. Its thirty-seven stories of glass and bronze
are articulated by extruded I-beams on a dark glass curtain wall. Depending on the angle of view
and lighting, its color can range from a deep black to a golden brown. The owner of the building,
Samuel Bronfman, had only one requirement of the building: that it be "the crowning glory of
everyone's work."
The Seagram Building may easily be the structure that Mies is most recognized for, but it was not
the last of his great works. In the last ten years of his life he designed almost thirty buildings,
including the Bacardi Administration Building in Cuba, the Martin Luther King Library in
Washington, D.C., and the IBM Regional Office Building in Chicago. In 1959 he earned the
"Orden Pour le Merite" lifetime achievement award in Germany and later the Presidential Medal
of Freedom from the U.S. in 1963. Mies accomplished everything an architect could accomplish
in a lifetime, and more. Elaine Hochman, author of Architects of Fortune summarizes Mies'
career by saying "the refinement of his architectural vision, his sensitivity toward materials, and
urge for perfection has been lauded to a great extent." After his death on August 7, 1969, he was
buried in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, the final resting place of many architectural leaders,
including Louis Sullivan. The street in front of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art near
his former residence was also named after him.
Mies is universally regarded as one of the creators of modern architecture; in fact, few architects
have required so much praise during and after their lifetime as Mies. As a modernist in style but
classicist in principle, Mies' work followed from history, but never imitated historical styles. He
was recognized for his elegant use of material and precision of details. He often admitted to being
more interested in intensifying an individual experience of a space than using architecture as a tool
for social transformation. Throughout his career he sought out to leave a legacy of discipline,
order, clarity, and truth in his architecture, and he became quite successful at it. James Johnson
Sweeney remembered Mies at his memorial ceremony one month after his death: "The bequest
which Mies left to all of us was his vital, personal, and inspiring patterns of order in a world which
has suffered too long in recent years from the disregard of such a spiritual discipline. Today there
is no need to stress the value of Mies' contribution, nor his stature as an artist. As the latter, he
had the good fortune to live to realize the universal recognition that was being paid him. To the
world he was a great architect and a modest, self-effacing man. To his intimates he will always
remain, what he always was to them, a benign monolith: a warm friend and full human being."
. architecture.
Ludwig Mies was born in Aachen, Germany in 1886. He lived there for twenty years with his
parents. His father worked as a mason and gave Mies a. architect and a few names will come up repeatedly. One of
these people is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. As one of the brilliant architects of the twentieth
century,