Farnsworth House

-Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Presentation by Huzefa Patheria

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe(1886- 1969)

• German Architect• No formal training in architecture• Worked under Peter Behrens• Succeeded Gropius as Bauhaus Director• Migrated to the US and taught architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology • Designed SKYSCRAPERS OF STEEL AND GLASS which became models of skyscraper design throughout the world

“Less is more.”-van der Rohe

CHARACTER OF WORKS:• Simple rectangular forms• Open, flexible plans and multi-functional spaces• Widespread use of glass to bring the outside in• Mastered steel and glass construction• Exposed and very refined structural details

Mies van der Rohe, FARNSWORTH HOUSE, Illinois, 1946-51

Designed and built from 1946 to 1951, Farnsworth House is considered a paradigm of international style architecture in America. The house's structure consists of precast concrete floor and roof slabs supported by a carefully crafted steel skeleton frame of beams, girders and columns. The facade is made of single panes of glass spanning from floor to ceiling, fastened to the structural system by steel mullions. The building is heated by radiant coils set in the concrete floor; natural cross ventilation and the shade of nearby trees provide minimal cooling. Though it proved difficult to live in, the Farnsworth House's elegant simplicity is still regarded as an important accomplishment of the international style.

• Between 1931 and 1935 (and after WW2) a series of houses which adapt the Barcelona Pavilion plan-type to domestic use; plans increasingly introverted

• Nature still dominant in his sketches – the house frames a view in which nature is idealised

Farnsworth House, 1946-50, Plano (IL)

• Often assumed that the minimalist distillation in Mies has to do with commitment to the craft of building, but he appears more engaged with idealising and mediating techniques of graphic representation

• His criteria ideal and visual to a great degree – not constructional

• He uses materiality but in a montage way

• ‘Mies’s conception of architecture followed the dialectic tendency of German Idealism to think in terms of opposites. According to the Neoplatonic aesthetics that influenced his thinking, the transcendental world is reflected in the world of the senses.’ (Colquhoun)

Mies van der Rohe, LAKE SHORE DRIVE APTS. & THE SEAGRAM BUILDING

Mies van der Rohe, SEAGRAM BUILDING, New York, 1958

Mies van der Rohe, LAKE SHORE DRIVE APARTMENTS, Illinois, 1951

Mies van der Rohe, FARNSWORTH HOUSE Interior,Illinois, 1946-51

Mies van der Rohe, GERMAN PAVILION Interior,Barcelona Expo, 1929

End