5/26/22, 9:44 AM Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - Wikipedia

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (/miːs/ MEESS; German: [miːs];
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886  – August
17, 1969) was a German-American architect.[1] 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.

In the 1930s, Mies was the last director of the Bauhaus, a ground-
breaking school of modern art, design and architecture.[2] 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 what is today the Illinois Institute of
Technology in Chicago.

Mies sought to establish his own particular architectural style that

could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for
their own eras. The style he created made a statement with its Born Maria Ludwig Michael
extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of Mies

modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define

March 27, 1886

interior spaces, as also conducted by other modernist architects in

the 1920s and 1930s such as Richard Neutra. Mies strove toward Aachen, Kingdom of
an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order Prussia, German
balanced against the implied freedom of unobstructed free- Empire
flowing open space. He called his buildings "skin and bones" Died August 17, 1969
architecture. He sought an objective approach that would guide (aged 83)

the creative process of architectural design, but was always

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
concerned with expressing the spirit of the modern era. He is
often associated with his fondness for the aphorisms, "less is Citizenship Germany (1886–
more" and "God is in the details". 1944)
United States (1944–
1969)

Contents Occupation Architect

Spouse(s) Adele Auguste "Ada"
Early career
Bruhn (1913–1918;
Personal life separated)
Traditionalism to Modernism Children 4
Emigration to the United States Awards Pour le Mérite (1959)

Career in the United States Royal Gold Medal

American work (1959)

Chicago Federal Complex AIA Gold Medal

Farnsworth House (1960)

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The Promontory – Lake Shore Drive Presidential Medal of

860–880 Lake Shore Drive Freedom (1963)
Seagram Building Buildings Barcelona Pavilion

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Crown Hall

Two buildings in Baltimore, MD Farnsworth House

National Gallery, Berlin Highfield House

Mies Building at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN 860–880 Lake Shore

Furniture Drive

One Charles Center

Educator
Seagram Building

Later years and death

New National Gallery

Archives Toronto-Dominion
Gallery Centre

List of works Tugendhat House

Westmount Square

See also
Martin Luther King Jr.
References Memorial Library

Further reading
External links

Early career
Mies was born March 27, 1886, in Aachen, Germany.[3] He
worked in his father's stone carving shop[3] and at several local
design firms before he moved to Berlin, where he joined the
office of interior designer Bruno Paul.[4] He began his
architectural career as an apprentice at the studio of Peter 4 5
Behrens from 1908 to 1912,[5] where he was exposed to the 2
current design theories and to progressive German culture. He 3
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.[6]
1
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[7])[8][9] and Notable buildings in today's Germany: 1
using the Dutch "van der", because the German form "von" was – Weissenhof Estate, 2 – Neue
a nobiliary particle legally restricted to those of genuine Nationalgalerie, 3 – Haus Lange and
aristocratic lineage.[10] He began his independent professional Haus Esters, 4 – Riehl House, 5 –
career designing upper-class homes.[11] Lemke House

Personal life

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In 1913, Mies married Adele Auguste (Ada) Bruhn (1885–1951), the daughter of a wealthy
industrialist.[12] The couple separated in 1918, after having three daughters: Dorothea (1914–2008),
an actress and dancer who was known as Georgia, Marianne (1915–2003), and Waltraut (1917–
1959),[13] who was a research scholar and curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. During his military
service in 1917, Mies fathered a son out of wedlock.[14]

In 1925 Mies began a relationship with designer Lilly Reich that ended when he moved to the United
States; from 1940 until his death, artist Lora Marx (1900–1989) was his primary companion. Mies
carried on a romantic relationship with sculptor and art collector Mary Callery for whom he designed
an artist's studio in Huntington, Long Island, New York.[15] He had a brief romantic relationship with
Nelly van Doesburg. After having met in Europe many years prior, they met again in New York in
1947 during a dinner with Josep Lluís Sert where he promised her he would help organize an
exhibition in Chicago featuring the work of her late husband Theo van Doesburg. This exhibition took
place from the 15th of October until the 8th of November 1947, with their romance officially ending
not much later. Nevertheless they remained on good terms, spending Easter together in 1948 at a
modern farmhouse renovated by Mies on Long Island, as well as meeting several more times that
year.[16] He also was rumored to have a brief relationship with Edith Farnsworth, who commissioned
his work for the Farnsworth House.[17][18] His daughter Marianne's son, Dirk Lohan (b. 1938),
studied under, and later worked for, Mies.

Traditionalism to Modernism
After World War I, while still designing traditional neoclassical
homes, Mies began a parallel experimental effort. He joined his
avant-garde peers in the long-running search for a new style that
would be suitable for the modern industrial age. The weak points
of traditional styles had been under attack by progressive theorists
since the mid-nineteenth century, primarily for the contradictions
of hiding modern construction technology with a facade of
ornamented traditional styles.

The mounting criticism of the historical styles gained substantial Patio of Villa Wolf, built in 1926 in
cultural credibility after World War I, a disaster widely seen as a Guben for Erich and Elisabeth Wolf
failure of the old world order of imperial leadership of Europe.
The aristocratic classical revival styles were particularly reviled by
many as the architectural symbol of a now-discredited and
outmoded social system. Progressive thinkers called for a
completely new architectural design process guided by rational
problem-solving and an exterior expression of modern materials
and structure rather than what they considered the superficial
application of classical facades.

While continuing his traditional neoclassical design practice, Mies Barcelona Pavilion in Barcelona,
began to develop visionary projects that, though mostly unbuilt, constructed in 1929 for the world
rocketed him to fame as an architect capable of giving form that exposition
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.[19]
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