AR. MIES VAN DE ROHE-"Less is More"

1. AR. LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE
SUBMITTED TO: - SUBMITTED BY: -
AR. SAKSHI RAJPUT HARSIMRAN SINGH
VAISHALI DHIMAN
VANLALMALSAWMI

3. • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), a
German-born architect and educator, is
widely acknowledged as one of the 20th
century's greatest architects.
• By emphasizing open space and revealing the
industrial materials used in construction, he
helped define modern architecture.

4. BIOGRAPHY
• Born in Aachen, Germany, Mies spent the first
half of his career in his native country.
• His early work was mainly residential, and he
received his first independent commission, the
Riehl House, when he was only 20 years old.
• He worked in his father's stone carving shop and
at several local design firms before he moved to
Berlin, where he joined the office of interior
designer Bruno Paul.

5. BIOGRAPHY
• He began his architectural career as an
apprentice at the studio of Peter Behrens from
1908 to 1912, where he was exposed to the
current design theories and to progressive
German culture.
• Mies served as construction manager of the
Embassy of the German Empire in Saint
Petersburg under Behrens.

6. BIOGRAPHY
• Mies quickly became
a leading figure in the
avant-garde life of
Berlin and was widely
respected in Europe for
his innovative structures,
including the
Barcelona Pavilion.

7. BIOGRAPHY
• In 1930, he was named
director of the Bauhaus,
the renowned German
school of experimental
art and design, which
he led until 1933 when
he closed the school
under pressure from
the Nazi Regime.

8. PHILOSOPHY
• The absence of any decorative treatment was
fundamental.
• His buildings radiate the confidence,
rationality, and elegance of their creator.
• His buildings were free of ornamentation .
• His works confess the essential elements of our
lives.
• He followed the reductionist approach.
• Less is more.

9. STYLE
• Mies, like many of his post-World War I
contemporaries, sought to establish a new
architectural style that could represent modern
times.
• Mies architecture has been described as being
expressive of the industrial age.
• He created an influential twentieth-century
architectural style, stated with extreme clarity
and simplicity.

10. FEATURES
• His mature buildings made use of modern materials
such as industrial steel and plate glass to define
interior spaces.
• He strove toward an architecture with a minimal
framework of structural order balanced against the
implied freedom of unobstructed free-flowing
open space.
• He called his buildings "skin and bones"
architecture.
• Mies found appeal in the use of simple rectilinear
and planar forms, clean lines, pure use of color,
and the extension of space around and beyond
interior walls

11. Traditionalism to Modernism
NEOCLASSICAL HOMES GLASS SKYSCRAPER
• After World War I, Mies
began, while still
designing traditional
neoclassical homes, a
parallel experimental
effort.
Boldly abandoning ornament
altogether, Mies made a dramatic
modernist debut with his stunning
competition proposal for the faceted
all-glass Friedrichstraße skyscraper
in 1921, followed by a taller curved
version in 1922 named the Glass
Skyscraper.

12. SIGNIFICANCE
• One notable way that Mies connected his
buildings with nature was by extending
outdoor plaza tiles into the floor of a lobby,
synthesizing the exterior and interior spaces of
the site. The device accentuated the effortless
flow between natural conditions and artificial
structures.

13. Characteristic Features
• Simplicity and clarity of forms and elimination
of “unnecessary detail”
• The related concept of "Truth to materials",
meaning that the true nature or natural
appearance of a material ought to be seen rather
than concealed or altered to represent
something else .
• Use of industrially-produced materials; adoption
of the machine aesthetic

14. WORKS
• THE BARCELONA PAVILION
• S. R. CROWN HALL
• FARNSWORTH HOUSE
• SEAGRAM BUILDING
• LAKE SHORE DRIVE
• MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
• NATIONAL GALLERY, BERLIN
• TORONTO-DOMINION BANK TOWER

15. THE BARCELONA PAVILION

16. THE BARCELONA PAVILION
• The Barcelona Pavilion, also known as the
German Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies
van der Rohe, as the German national Pavilion
for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition.
• The building has become a seminal icon of
modernist twentieth-century architecture,
comprising symmetry, open-plan spaces, precise
proportion and minimalist design

17. THE BARCELONA PAVILION
• Combined with materials
of glass, steel and
extravagant marble.
• The same features of
minimalism can be
applied to the prestigious
furniture specifically
designed for the building,
among which the iconic
Barcelona chair.

18. THE BARCELONA PAVILION
• Free of external
ornament, the building
was made of the most
luxurious materials.
• Walls were fashioned of
thin plates of
luminous semi-
precious stone, from
green polished
marble to golden
onyx.

19. THE BARCELONA PAVILION

20. THE BARCELONA PAVILION

21. S. R. CROWN HALL

22. S. R. CROWN HALL
• S.R. Crown Hall is the home of
the College of Architecture at
the Illinois Institute of
Technology in Chicago,
Illinois.
• Mies refined the basic steel
and glass construction style,
beautifully capturing
simplicity and openness.
• The building is configured as a
self-contained in a rectangular
shape on two levels.

23. S. R. CROWN HALL
• Is a free volume with its
four walls of glass,
surrounded by a large
green area, with large
trees, mainly in the south
facade.
• The building is divided
into two levels: the main
floor, shaped like a large
space and a semi-buried
where they are located
the offices, meeting
rooms and services.

24. FARNSWORTH HOUSE

25. FARNSWORTH HOUSE
• Between 1946 and 1951, Mies van der Rohe
designed and built the Farnsworth House.
• Mies explored the relationship between people,
shelter, and nature.
• The glass pavilion is raised six feet above a
floodplain next to the Fox River, surrounded
by forest and rural prairies.

26. FARNSWORTH HOUSE
• He envisioned a “skin and bones” architecture
that separated the structure from the free
flowing space.
• Glass was seen as a
quintessentially modern
material that also had
the ability to reconnect
humans to nature.

27. FARNSWORTH HOUSE
• “If you view nature through the glass walls of the
Farnsworth House, it gains a more profound
significance than if viewed from outside.”

28. SEAGRAM BUILDING

29. SEAGRAM BUILDING
• This structure, and the INTERNATIONAL
STYLE in which it was built, had enormous
influences on American architecture.
• The integral plaza, building, stone faced lobby
and distinctive glass and bronze exterior were
designed by Mies van der Rohe.
• It is a 160m tall skyscraper.
• It stands as one of the finest examples of the
functionalist aesthetic and a masterpiece of
corporate modernism.

30. SEAGRAM BUILDING
• It was built of a steel frame,
from which non-structural
glass walls were hung.
• This buillding emphasises
transparency through the use
of glass.
• The building was, notably, the
first with floor to-ceiling
windows, making the wall a
true curtain of glass.

31. SEAGRAM BUILDING
• The plan of the building is
based on a 8.50 m grid,
pursued to unprecedented
Miesian accuracy.
• The elevator core is placed to
the back of the building,
forming the protruding,
windowless back wall of the
tower.
• Set on bronze-clad pillars, the
38-storey facade consists of
alternating bands of bronze
plating and "whisky brown"-
tinted glass.

32. SEAGRAM BUILDING

33. LAKE SHORE DRIVE

34. LAKE SHORE DRIVE
• Mies designed a series of four middle-income
high-rise apartment buildings for developer
Herbert Greenwald.
• (which was built between 1949 and 1951) and
Lake Shore Drive towers on Chicago's Lakefront.
• These towers, with façades of steel and glass,
were radical departures from the typical
residential brick apartment buildings of the
time.

35. LAKE SHORE DRIVE
• Just as with his
interiors, he created
free flowing spaces
and flat surfaces that
represented the idea
of an oasis of
uncluttered clarity
and calm within the
chaos of the city.

36. LAKE SHORE DRIVE
• He included nature
by leaving openings
in the pavement,
through which plants
seem to grow
unfettered by
urbanization, just as
in the pre-settlement
environment.

37. National Gallery, Berlin

38. National Gallery, Berlin
• Mies's last work was the Neue Nationalgalerie
art museum, for the Berlin National Gallery.
• Considered one of the most perfect statements of
his architectural approach.
• The upper pavilion is a precise composition of
monumental steel columns and a cantilevered
(overhanging) roof plane with a glass enclosure.

39. National Gallery, Berlin
• The simple square glass pavilion is a powerful
expression of his ideas about flexible interior
space, defined by transparent walls and
supported by an external structural frame.

40. National Gallery, Berlin

41. THANK YOU