Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

1886-1969
Architektur

beginnt wenn zwei Backsteine sorgfltig

zusammengesetzt werden.
Architecture begins when you carefully put two bricks together

 Ludwig Mies was born in

1886 on March 27. He was
born in Aachen, in the
Nordhein Westfalen region
of Germany, on the border of
Belgium. This city was best
known as the permanent
residence of Charlemagne
beginning in 786

Ludwig began his building career

working with his father who was a
master stonemason. At the same
time, he attended the trade school
in Aachen although he never
graduated.

At 19 he left Aachen and moved to

Berlin. After brief military service he
began an intern for designer Bruno
Paul in 1906

Self portrait of
Bruno Paul

After one year with Paul, in 1906 Mies

received his first independent
commission to design the house of
philosophy professor Alois Riehl

After its completion in 1907 Ludwig spent one more

year with Bruno Paul until 1908 when he began work at
the offices of famed German architect Peter Behrens.

 A student of Art Nouveau or Jugendstil

movement, Behrens believed in a
melding of the arts and architecture to
create building

At his offices, Mies worked with the likes of other

famed architects Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius
founder of the Bauhaus movement . Here he also
begin to develop his early sense of style which
was a cross of advanced structuralism and
Prussian classicism

After only 4 years in his service Mies left Behrens in 1912 to start his
own office. He immediately received work and designed a series of
home in the style of famed Prussian architect Karl Schinkel.

The following year, Mies married schoolteacher

Ada Bruhn to whom he had been introduced by the
Riehls

Being a man of solitude and intense artistic passion, the marriage lasted
but was one characterized by distance. By 1921 he had completely
separated himself from his family. It was at this time that he adopted the
last name of Mies van der Rohe. It was an amalgamation of his fathers
last name combined with the Dutch van der in addition to his mothers
maiden name Rohe.

Ludwig Mies, now Mies van der Rohe continued work

through the twenties and became increasingly involved with
artistic movements of the time in Berlin such as the
Novembergruppe and Zehner Ring.
With a new name came also a
new sense of style. His phrase
less is more began to be
seen in his work as seen in his
entry to a German skyscraper
competition. The building was
made entirely of steel and
glass composites

Skyscraper model

In 1925 van der der Rohe was appointed VP of the Deutsche Werkbund an
organization aimed at elevating the quality of german design.
The next year he was given the task to head the Weissenhof Exhibition, a
model housing colony in Stuttgart

Like his contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright,

Mies van der Rohe believed that furniture
also played an important role in the design
of a building
This chair was a design for the same
exhibition

The following year he designed a bank and office building in Stuttgart

for another national competition. One of his greatest designs came the
following year in the German Pavilion in Barcelona in 1929.

The Pavilion was innovative in that the design called for the roof to be
supported by chrome columns which meant that the walls could be
freely positioned since they did not support the structure

It was later dismantled

but rebuilt in the
1980s

The next year Mies designed the Turgend house in

Czechoslovakia.His design was once again revolutionary
and combined the seamless flow from outdoors to indoors.

In 1930 he served as Bauhaus director taking over from

former colleague Walter Gropius. Mies served this position
until the school was closed by the Nazi party in 1933.

The school had a very renegade reputation and as such it

had moved quite a bit from Weimar where it began to
Dessau before settling in Berlin.

1937 marks the departure of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

from Germany due to rising pressure from the Nazi party.
Before leaving however he was offered a

professorship at the Armour Institute of Technology

in Chicago. This would later become the Illinois
Institute of Technology and Mies would be the
prime architect for the campus of the newly formed
school.

In 1944 Mies van der Rohe became a U.S. citizen. In 1946

he began work on the Farnsworth House a weekend retreat
for doctor Edith Farnsworth. Its one of the most minimalist
houses ever designed being composed of a transparent
box framed by eight exterior steel columns with a single
room subdivided by partitions and completely enclosed in
glass.

The next decade in America was characterized by

a industrial boom in a new post war american
economy.The only buildings big enough to house
these captains of industry were:

Skyscrapers

Finally design would merge with construction and much of the work that
Mies had begun in the 20s would come to fruition. His first project
being the Lakeshore Apartment Buildings in Chicago.

Once again he created with form and function . The first floor of the building rested
on plithes giving the building integration with the outdoors.

Mies van der Rohe would go on to to design many more skyscrapers in

the U.S. as well as Toronto, Montreal, and elsewhere. Another
notable one being the Seagrams Building in New York.

In 1962 , the now famed, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe would return to
Germany to design the New National Gallery in Berlin.

Each of my buildings was another step in the process of my search for clarity.

Mies van der Rohe was plagued by arthritis for the majority of his
later life. Although involved to the best of his ability Ludwig would
never see the completion of the National Gallery. He died in
Chicago, August, 17, 1969

He died leaving a legacy of revolutionary architecture. Other

then the buildings themselves he is remembered by his
approach to architecture, categorized by such sayings as:

God is in the details.

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.

Thoughts in action.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

1886-1969

 Bibliography:

www.greatbuildings.com
www.designboom.com/
portrait/mies/bg.html
www.architectureweek.com/2001/0801/news_1-2.html
www.moma.org/mies
www.archinform.de
Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography Franz Schulze