Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is called the most influential architect of the 20th century. His designs and overall worldview have shaped the way modern cities look today.
Ludwig Mies (03/27/1886, Aachen – 09/17/1969, Chicago) – modernist and founder of the international style. The general principles that he used in his buildings: free plan, frame structure, lightweight structures, modular system, new materials, simple geometry.
1. Building as a solution to a problem In his youth, working in the studio of the German architect Peter Behrens, Mies van der Rohe developed a universal approach to building design. He called himself an ardent opponent of the idea that the specificity of buildings should have an individual character: the nature of the building should be determined by the general problem solved with the help of architecture.
2. “Less is more” – the principle formulated by Mies van der Rohe for a long time captured the minds of all architects who professed extreme functionalism. Like God is in the details, the expression Less is more has become an aphorism and slogan of modern architecture.
3. Open plan “Many people think that an open plan means absolute freedom, but this is not so. The free plan requires the same discipline and thoughtfulness from the architect as the traditional plan,” wrote Mies van der Rohe in 1953. The concept of an open plan was first implemented in the project of a three-story residential building in the village of Weißenhof, built in the suburbs of Stuttgart for the Housing exhibition.
4. Clear design The Architect was interested in clarity and understandability of the design. “If you start designing the layout and interior spaces first, everything will get stuck and it will be impossible to create a clear design. The structure is the backbone of the building, and thanks to it, a free plan is possible. Without this backbone, the plan would not be free, but chaotic and therefore difficult to use the building,” Ludwig wrote in 1953.
Barcelona armchairs, 1929. Knoll.
5. Barcelona Chair In 1929, Mies van der Rohe designed the German Pavilion for the International Exhibition in Barcelona. A masterpiece of steel, onyx, travertine and glass. The architect abandoned the decor and combined the interior with the surrounding landscape. Knowing that the pavilion would be visited by King Alfonso XII of Spain and his wife, Mies van der Rohe developed a version of modernist thrones – this is how the Barcelona chairs appeared, which were then produced by the American company Knoll.
6. Just Mies From 1912 to 1930, the son of an artisan, Ludwig, works as an independent architect in Berlin and changes his surname to a more pretentious one, combining the surname Mies inherited from his father with his mother’s Rohe using the aristocratic combination “van der”.
7. Bauhaus director Mies van der Rohe became the third and last director of the German Bauhaus. In 1930, the school’s founder, Walter Gropius, asked Mies van der Rohe to take over the post. The second director, who headed the school from 1928 to 1930, Hannes Meyer, who was a Marxist, handed over the reins to Mies van der Rohe and left with several students for the USSR to build cities at large factories and design the city of Birobidzhan.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1934. Bauhaus. Photo: Werner Rohde.
8. Petersburg Ludwig Mies van der Rohe built in St. Petersburg. Shortly before the First World War in 1911-1912, he supervised the construction of the German embassy building on St. Isaac’s Square, which was built according to the design of his boss Peter Behrens.
9. Beckmann, Kandinsky and Klee In 1938, Mies van der Rohe left for the United States, fleeing the Nazis, and became a naturalized American. “I lived in a hotel in Chicago for several years,” the architect recalled. “I only had three needs: martinis, Dunhill cigars and expensive clothes.” I had three valuables with me – the work of Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.”
Farnsworth House. 1946-1951.
10. Glass Walls The house designed for Chicago surgeon Edith Farnsworth, a glass frame parallelepiped raised on supports, became the architect’s most copied and cited residential building. The house seems to float in space. The walls are separated from the load-bearing supports, emphasizing the ephemeral nature of the structure. The house has no internal partitions; it consists of a single room open to the surrounding landscape. “When you look at the landscape through the glass walls of Farnsworth House, it takes on a deeper meaning than when you contemplate it from outside the building.”
Seagram Building. NY. Project by Mies van der Rohe with the participation of Philip Johnson. 38 floors.
The building was intended for the offices of the Canadian firm Joseph E. Seagram’s & Sons for the production of alcoholic beverages.
11. Skyscrapers Mies van der Rohe designed a number of famous skyscrapers in Chicago, but his exemplary and most famous building was the Seagram Building in New York, completed in 1958 – the prototype for many office buildings built around the world. It was the Seagram Building that determined the character of the buildings of business centers from London to Singapore.
“Architecture depends on the era, it is not fashion, but it is not eternal either – it is part of the era,” the architect wrote in 1961, eight years before his death. – Understand the means of the era, understand its essence, and not something visible, external. But it is very difficult to find what is essential for the era, and the process of revealing a large form proceeds very slowly. This larger form cannot be introduced by you or me, but we are working on it without realizing it. And when a large form becomes fully understood, the era ends and something new begins… My concept will not go out of fashion for two reasons. It is progressive because it uses scientific and technological advances and the basic capabilities of our time.”
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