Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
 | |
| Ludwig Mies van der Rohe | |
| Born | 1886 |
|---|---|
| Died | 1969 |
| Nationality | German-born American |
| Occupation | Architect, furniture designer |
| Known for | Barcelona Pavilion; Seagram Building |
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) was a German-born American architect and furniture designer and a leading figure of modernist architecture. Associated with the International Style, he is known for buildings of steel and glass, for furniture such as the Barcelona chair, and for the maxim "less is more."[1][2][3]
Germany
Mies was born in Aachen in 1886 and attended the city's cathedral school before drafting stucco ornament for an interior decorator. He studied with Bruno Paul in Berlin, worked from 1908 to 1911 in the office of Peter Behrens alongside Walter Gropius, and then practiced independently in Berlin.[2]
He was vice-president of the Deutscher Werkbund from 1926 to 1932. In 1927 he directed the Weissenhof Settlement in Stuttgart and patented a cantilevered tubular-steel chair. He designed the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona world's fair, together with its furniture, and the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, completed in 1930. That year he succeeded Hannes Meyer as director of the Bauhaus, which he led until the Nazis forced its closure in 1933.[2][4]
United States
Mies arrived in Chicago in 1938 to head the architecture program at the Armour Institute of Technology, bringing his Bauhaus colleagues Ludwig Hilberseimer and Walter Peterhans to its faculty. After Armour merged with the Lewis Institute in 1940 to form the Illinois Institute of Technology, he planned its expanded 120-acre campus, which now holds 20 of his buildings, the largest concentration of his work anywhere.[4] The campus's Crown Hall, opened in 1956, houses the College of Architecture and is a National Historic Landmark.[5]
His first domestic commission in the United States was the Farnsworth House, a weekend retreat for the Chicago physician Edith Farnsworth beside the Fox River in Plano, Illinois. Built between 1946 and 1951, the glass-and-steel house is now a National Historic Landmark owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[6]
His later buildings include the Seagram Building in New York (1958) and the New National Gallery in Berlin, designed from 1962. He died in Chicago in 1969.[2]
See also
References
- ↑ "Ludwig Mies van der Rohe". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2026-10-16.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Ludwig Mies van der Rohe". Vitra Design Museum. Retrieved 2026-10-16.
- ↑ "Barcelona Chair". Knoll. Retrieved 2026-10-19.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Mies' Legacy at Illinois Institute of Technology and Beyond". Mies van der Rohe Society. Retrieved 2026-10-19.
- ↑ "Crown Hall dazzles in Mies simplicity". Illinois Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2026-10-19.
- ↑ "Farnsworth House". National Trust for Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2026-10-19.