Ludwig Mies van der Rohe born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, (1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. Mies was the last director of the Bauhaus, a seminal school in modern architecture. After Nazism's rise to power, with its strong opposition to modernism (leading to the closing of the Bauhaus itself), Mies emigrated to the United States. He accepted the position to head the architecture school at the Armour Institute of Technology (later the Illinois Institute of Technology), in Chicago
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. 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. He worked alongside Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, who was later also involved in the development of the Bauhaus. Mies served as construction manager of the Embassy of the German Empire in Saint Petersburg under Behrens.
Ludwig Mies renamed himself as part of his transformation from a tradesman's son to an architect working with Berlin's cultural elite, adding "van der" and his mother's maiden name "Rohe" (the word mies means "lousy" in German and using the Dutch "van der", because the German form "von" was a nobiliary particle legally restricted to those of genuine aristocratic lineage. He began his independent professional career designing upper-class homes.
sought to establish his own particular architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras. He created his own twentieth-century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces, as also conducted by other modernist architects in the 1920s and 1930s such as Richard Neutra. Mies 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. He sought an objective approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design, but was always concerned with expressing the spirit of the modern era. He is often associated with his fondness for the aphorisms, "less is more" and "God is in the details".
2. LUDWIG MIES VAN DER
ROHE;
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe born Maria Ludwig Michael
Mies; March 27, (1886 – August 17, 1969) was a
German-American architect. He was commonly
referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar
Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd
Wright, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of
modernist architecture. Mies was the last director of
the Bauhaus, a seminal school in modern architecture.
After Nazism's rise to power, with its strong opposition
to modernism (leading to the closing of the Bauhaus
itself), Mies emigrated to the United States. He
accepted the position to head the architecture school
at the Armour Institute of Technology (later the Illinois
Institute of Technology), in Chicago.
3. EARLY CAREER:-
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. 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. He worked alongside Le Corbusier and Walter
Gropius, who was later also involved in the development of the Bauhaus. Mies
served as construction manager of the Embassy of the German Empire in Saint
Petersburg under Behrens.
Ludwig Mies renamed himself as part of his transformation from a tradesman's son
to an architect working with Berlin's cultural elite, adding "van der" and his
mother's maiden name "Rohe" (the word mies means "lousy" in German and using
the Dutch "van der", because the German form "von" was a nobiliary particle legally
restricted to those of genuine aristocratic lineage. He began his independent
professional career designing upper-class homes.
4. • Mies sought to establish his own particular architectural style that could
represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own
eras. He created his own twentieth-century architectural style, stated
with extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of
modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define
interior spaces, as also conducted by other modernist architects in the
1920s and 1930s such as Richard Neutra. Mies 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. He sought an
objective approach that would guide the creative process of
architectural design, but was always concerned with expressing the
spirit of the modern era. He is often associated with his fondness for the
aphorisms, "less is more" and "God is in the details".
INTRODUCTION:-
5. TRADITIONALISM TO
MODERNISM:-
While continuing his traditional neoclassical design practice, Mies began to develop
visionary projects that, though mostly unbuilt, rocketed him to fame as an architect
capable of giving form that was in harmony with the spirit of the emerging modern
society. Boldly abandoning ornament altogether, Mies made a dramatic modernist
debut in 1921 with his stunning competition proposal for the faceted all-glass
Friedrichstraße skyscraper, followed by a taller curved version in 1922 named the
Glass Skyscraper.
He continued with a series of pioneering projects, culminating in his two European
masterworks: the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition (often
called the Barcelona Pavilion) in 1929. (a 1986 reconstruction is now built on the
original site) and the elegant Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, completed in
1930.
6. EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED
STATES:-
Commission opportunities dwindled with the Great Depression after 1929. Starting in 1930, Mies
served as the last director of the faltering Bauhaus, at the request of his colleague and competitor
Walter Gropius. In 1932, Nazi political pressure forced the state-supported school to leave its campus
in Dessau, and Mies moved it to an abandoned telephone factory in Berlin. By 1933, however, the
continued operation of the school was untenable (it was raided by the Gestapo in April), and in July of
that year, Mies and the faculty voted to close the Bauhaus. He built very little in these years (one built
commission was Philip Johnson's New York apartment); the Nazis rejected his style as not "German" in
character.
Frustrated and unhappy, he left his homeland reluctantly in 1937 as he saw his opportunity for any
future building commissions vanish, accepting a residential commission in Wyoming and then an offer
to head the department of architecture of the newly established Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in
Chicago.There he introduced a new kind of education and attitude later known as Second Chicago
School, which became very influential in the following decades in North America and Europe.
7. LIST OF WORKS:-
Early career in Berlin (1907–1938)
• 1907 Riehl House – Residential Home, Potsdam, Germany.
• 1911 Perl House – Residential Home, Zehlendorf.
• 1913 Werner House – Residential Home, Zehlendorf.
• 1917 Urbig House – Residential Home, Potsdam.
• 1922 Kempner House – Residential Home, Charlottenburg.
• 1922 Feldmann House – Residential Home, Wilmersdorf.
• 1925 Wolf House - Residential Home Guben.
• 1926 Mosler House – Residential Home, Babelsberg.
• 1927 Weissenhof Estate – Housing Exhibition coordinated by Mies and with a contribution by him,
Stuttgart.
• 1928 Haus Lange and Haus Esters – Residential Home and an art museum, Krefeld.
• 1929 Barcelona Pavilion – World's Fair Pavilion, Barcelona, Spain.
• 1930 Villa Tugendhat – Residential Home, Brno, Czech Republic, designated a World Heritage Site by
UNESCO.
• 1932 Lemke House – Residential Home, Weissensee.
8. BUILDINGS AFTER EMIGRATION TO THE
UNITED STATES (1939–1960)
• 1939–1958 – Illinois Institute of Technology Campus Master Plan, Academic Campus & Buildings,
Chicago, Illinois.
• 1949 The Promontory Apartments – Residential Apartment Complex, Chicago, Illinois.
• 1951 Sheridan-Oakdale Apartments (2933 N Sheridan Rd ) – Residential Apartment Complex,
Chicago, Illinois.
• 1951 Lake Shore Drive Apartments – Residential Apartment Towers, Chicago.
• 1952 Arts Club of Chicago Interior Renovation – Art Gallery, demolished in 1997, Chicago, Illinois.
• 1954 Cullinan Hall – Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
• 1956 Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture– Academic Building, Chicago,
Illinois.
• 1958 Seagram Building – Office Tower, New York City, New York.
• 1958 Caroline Wiess Law Building, Museum of Fine Art, Houston.
• 1959 Home Federal Savings and Loan Association Building– Office Building, Des Moines, Iowa.
• 1959 Lafayette Park – Residential Development, Detroit, Michigan.
• 1960 Pavilion and Colonnade Apartments– Residential complex, Newark, New Jersey.
9. LATE CAREER WORLDWIDE:-
• 1961 Bacardi Office Building – Office Building, Mexico City.
• 1962 Tourelle-Sur-Rive – Residential apartment complex of three towers, Nuns' Island, Montreal,
Quebec, Canada.
• 1964 Highfield House, 4000 North Charles – Originally Rental Apartments, and now Condominium
Apartments, Baltimore, Maryland.
• 1965 Meredith Hall – School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Drake University, Des
Moines, IA.
• 1967 Westmount Square – Office & Residential Tower Complex, Westmount, Island of Montreal,
Quebec, Canada.
• 1967–1969 Toronto-Dominion Centre – Office Tower Complex, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• 1969 Filling station – Nuns' Island, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
• 1970 One Illinois Center – Office Tower, Chicago, Illinois (completed post-mortem).
• 1972 Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library – District of Columbia Public Library, Washington,
D.C. (completed post-mortem).
• 1973 American Life Building – Louisville, Kentucky.
10. MOST PROMINENT WORKS:-
• Chicago Federal Complex.
• Farnsworth House.
• 860–880 Lake Shore Drive.
• Seagram Building.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
• National Gallery, Berlin.
11. • CHICAGO FEDERAL COMPLEX:
• The Kluczynski Federal Building is a skyscraper in
the downtown Chicago loop. Located at 230
South Dearborn Street. The 45-story structure
was completed in 1974 as the last portion of the
new Federal Center. It is 562 feet (171 m) tall.
Floor count 1 to 42
Floor area 1,135,743 sq ft
(105,514.0 m
2
)
12. FEATURES:
• The Kluczynski Building is constructed of a
steel frame and contains 1,200,000 sq ft
(110,000 m2) of space. The exterior is
sheathed in bronze-tinted glass set into
bright aluminum frames. Beneath the
windows are steel spandrel panels painted
flat black and windows are separated
horizontally by steel mullions of projecting
steel I-beams also painted black. The two-
story lobby is recessed allowing for a
colonnade or pilotis to encircle the building
at street level. The interior walls and floors of
the lobby are covered in granite which
entends to the plaza.
14. • FARNSWORTH HOUSE:
• The Farnsworth House was designed and
constructed by mies between 1945 and 1951. It
is a one-room weekend retreat in what then
was a rural setting, located 55 miles (89 km)
southwest of Chicago's downtown, on a 60-
acre estate site adjoining the fox river, south of
the city of plano, Illinois . The steel and glas
house was commissioned by Edith Farnsworth,
M.D., a prominent Chicago nephrologist, as a
place where she could engage in her
hobbies—playing the violin, translating poetry,
and enjoying nature.
23. • 860-880 LAKE-SHORE DRIVE:
• 860–880 Lake Shore drive. is a twin pair of
glass-and-steel apartment towers . Shore
Drive along Lake Michigan in
the Streeterville neighborhood of
Chicago, Illinois. Construction began in
1949 . the project was completed in 1951.
The towers were added to the National
Register of Historic Places on August 28,
1980, and were designated as Chicago
Landmarks on June 10, 1996.
27. • SEAGRAM BUILDING:
• The Seagram Building is
a skyscraper at 375 Park Avenue,
between East 52nd and 53rd
Streets, in Midtown
Manhattan, New York City. The
integral plaza, building, stone
faced lobby and distinctive glass
and bronze exterior were
designed by German-American
architect Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe.
31. • MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON:
• The Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston (MFAH), located in
the Houston Museum
District, Houston, is one of
the largest museums in
the United States.The
permanent collection of the
museum spans more than 6,000
years of history with
approximately 64,000 works
from six continents.
33. • NATIONAL GALLERY, BERLIN:
• The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National
Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum
for modern art in Berlin, with its main
focus on the early 20th century. It is part
of the National Gallery of the Berlin State
Museums. The museum building and its
sculpture gardens were designed
by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and
opened in 1968.
• The gallery closed in 2015, for "several
years" of renovation.
34. ARCHITECTURE:
• The plan of the Neue Nationalgalerie is divided into two distinct stories. The
upper story serves as an entrance hall as well as the primary special exhibit
gallery, totaling 2,683 m2 (28,880 sq ft) of space. It is elevated from street level
and only accessible by three flights of steps. Though it only comprises a small
portion of the total gallery space, the exhibition pavilion stands boldly as the
building's primary architectural expression. Eight cruciform columns, two on
each length placed so as to avoid corners, support a square pre-stressed steel
roof plate 1.8 meters thick and painted black. An eighteen-meter
cantilever allows for ample space between the gallery's glazed façade and
eight supporting columns. The floor-to-ceiling height reaches 8.4 meters, and
the space is laid out on a 3.6-meter square dimensional grid. Black anodized
aluminum “egg crates” fit within the grid house lighting fixtures, with air ducts
suspended above.
• The lower story serves primarily as housing for the gallery's permanent
collection, though it also includes a library, offices, and a shop and café, and
totals about 10,000 m2 (110,000 sq ft) of space. It is three quarters below
ground so as to allow for safe storage of the artwork, its sole glazed façade
looking out on the museum's sloping sculpture garden and providing ample
indirect interior lighting.
36. SAYINGS:
“It is better to be good than to be original,"-- Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe.
"God dwells in the details.“-- Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe.
"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost
easier. That is why Chippendale is famous."-- Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe.