 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

• He was born in Germany on March

26,1886.
• Initially he worked with his father in his
stone carving shop and several local design
firms before working with interior designer
Bruno Paul in Berlin.
• His Architectural career began with
working as an apprentice in the studio of
Peter Behrens from 1908-1912, along
Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier.
• His talent was quickly recognized and he
soon began independent commissions,
despite his lack of a formal college-level
education.
• He joined the avant-garde Bauhaus design school as their director of architecture,
adopting and developing their functionalist application of simple geometric forms in
the design of useful objects.
• 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.
• “LESS IS MORE”
   FARNSWORTH HOUSE , USA
• Between 1946 and 1951, Miesvan der Rohe
designed and built the Farnsworth House, a
weekend retreat outside Chicago.
• He explored the relationship between people,
shelter, and nature.
• This small masterpiece showed the world that
exposed industrial steel and glass were materials
capable of creating architecture of great
emotional impact.

 
•The glass pavilion is raised six feet
above a flood plain next to the Fox River,
surrounded by forest and rural prairies.
•The highly-crafted pristine white
structural frame and all-glass walls define
a simple rectilinear interior space,
allowing nature and light to envelop the
interior space.
• The single-story house consists of eight I-shaped steel
columns that support the roof and floor frameworks,
and therefore are both structural and expressive.
• In between these columns are floor-to-ceiling
windows around the entire house, opening up the
rooms to the woods around it.
• The windows are what provide the beauty of Mies'
idea of tying the residence with its tranquil
surroundings.

 
•His idea for shading and privacy was through the trees that
were located on the private site.
•Mies explained this concept in an interview about the glass
pavilion stating, "Nature, too, shall live its own life. We must
beware not to disrupt it with the color of our houses and
interior fittings. Yet we should attempt to bring nature,
houses, and human beings together into a higher unity." 
• Mies intended for the house to be as light as possible
on the land, and so he raised the house 5 feet 3 inches
off the ground, allowing only the steel columns to meet
the ground and the landscape to extend past the
residence.
• In order to accomplish this, the mullions of the
windows also provide structural support for the floor
slab. 
• The ground floor of the Farnsworth House is thereby
elevated, and wide steps slowly transcend almost
effortlessly off the ground, as if they were floating up
to the entrance. Aside from walls in the center of the
house enclosing bathrooms, the floor plan is
completely open exploiting true minimalism. 
• With the Farnsworth house constructed about 100 feet
from the Fox River, Mies recognized the dangers of
flooding. He designed the house at an elevation that he
bellieved would protect it from the highest predicted
floods, which are anticipated every hundred years.
   SEAGRAM BUILDING, USA

• Architects : Miesvan der Rohe+ Philip

Johnson
• Location : New York, USA
• Project Area:150,918 square feet
• Project Year:1954-1958
• The 38-story building -Mies’ first attempt
at tall office building construction
• A bronze and dark glass climbing up 515
feet to the top of the tower, juxtaposing the
large granite surface of the plaza below.
• The plaza is fronted by two large fountains
surrounded by generous outdoor seating.
• It created a procession to the entry of the
building, providing the threshold that
linked the city with the skyscraper.
• The lobby also has a white ceiling that
stretches out over the entry doors further
eroding the defined line between interior
and exterior.
   SEAGRAM BUILDING, USA

• The office spaces above the lobby,

furnished by Philip Johnson, have
flexible floor plans lit with luminous
ceiling panels.
• These floors get maximum natural
lighting as the exterior being glass
panes of gray topaz that provide floor-
to-ceiling windows for the office
spaces.
• The metal bronze skin that is seen in
the facade is non structural but is used
to express the idea of the structural
frame that is underneath.
• Additional vertical elements were also
welded to the window panels not only
to stiffen the skin for installation and
wind loading, but to aesthetically
further enhance the vertical
articulation of the building.