Introduction to History of Contemporary Architecture
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House, Plano (1945-51) - (Federico Bucci)
The history of the weekend house that Ludvig Mies van der Rohe designed for Edith Farnsworth,
in the midst of the parks surrounding the small town of Plano, some 80 km south from Central Chicago,
was excessively affected by the complex relationship between the German architect and his American
client which resulted in a famous legal battle, sensationalised by the media, shortly before the house’s
completion, in 1951. We prefer not to deepen that episode, the controversies that followed and also
some historiographic interpretations that focused the attention on Edith Farnsworth’s private life. She
was a woman with an impressive résumé: after two degrees in Literature and Medicine and a prestigious
career as a nephrologist, after turning 60, she left America and moved to Tuscany, where she became
the prominent English translator of Montale’s and Quasimodo’s poems. Undoubtedly, when in 1945 she
met Mies, who had recently moved to Chicago to head the Illinois Institute of Technology, Edith
Farnsworth was looking for a place to cultivate her many interests. Considering that today the house
has been designated National Historical Landmark and that is a destination for numerous visitors from
all over the world, the goal that the architect and client set themselves, to build a classical temple in
which to practise the spiritual exercises of modern life, seems to have been fully achieved. Let us focus,
however, on the building’s technical features. The house’s plan consists of two rectangular slabs
suspended above the ground by white-painted steel columns. A stair with four wide steps leads up from
the ground level to the terrace slab, measuring 16.8 x 7 metres, connected, in turn, by an another stair
to the main slab of the house, 23.5 metres long and 8.8 metres wide, covered by a flat roof and closed
by glass walls for about one third. Thus, on a large area of land beside the river and among the trees,
Mies organized the space of the house on a two-level platform, raised to prevent floods and clad in
stone, that favours the relation between nature and domestic space. The steel skeleton, rarefied by its
white colour, provides an external frame supporting the floor and the roof: eight double-T-section
columns in parallel rows, 8.5 metres apart from each other, support 38 cm C-beams at the living area
and roof levels. These beams are the support for a reticular steel structure upon which the concrete
slabs of roof, ceiling and floor rest. The envelope is made from glass panels 0.6 cm thick, 2.9 m high
(floor to ceiling) and 3.2 m wide, that can be opened at the entrance and on the opposite side. A series
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of steel dividing uprights, also white, consisting of bars and angles, hold the vertical sides of the glass
panels in place. The curtains run on a continuous track, thus permitting light and shade according to
the needs. The interior, an area of approximately 141 sq. m., is defined by a rectangular volume,
asymmetrically positioned and wood-paneled, containing on one side the kitchen, on the other side the
fireplace facing to the living room, and on the short sides the bathrooms, accessible from the master
bed areas and the area near the entrance which may be used to accommodate visitors. This nucleus is
the only space in which there are elements perforating the surfaces of floor and ceiling. Indeed, the
waste and gutter pipes pass through the floor into the ground and a vertical stack, containing the
bathroom vent and chimney flue, rises to the roof level, passing through the ceiling. These elements
are confined to the central area (the most discrete and inaccessible part of the house) and are therefore
rendered virtually invisible also from the outside. The space is heated by a radiant system located in
the floor slabs. Originally, air conditioning was not included, as the cooling was provided by natural
ventilation from the two windows and the entrance doors. The sliding curtains hanging from the rails
allow to adjust the amount of light and heat. The final effect is that of a glass box inside a white steel
column structure. Though, Mies’ words, are, as always, inimitably seductive in their eloquence. Let us
listen to his words in a radio interview conducted in Berlin in 1968: “Farnsworth House, which I built for
the famous lady doctor, was almost a completely empty space. It was built on stilts in order to highlight
its fantastic and suspended position. It resembled a crystal. And I believed I had, in a sense, achieved
in a building man’s liberation from the force of gravity – not in an irrational way but, rather, with the
aid of reason. Miss Farnsworth, however, will reproach me for having created a typically masculine
obsession, as cold as ice, and, being masculine, uninhabitable, especially for a woman. And she, in all
seriousness, claimed compensation for damages. I had to prove (…) that I had not designed a tower of
Babel for Miss Farnsworth. Well, in the end we reached an agreement. Miss Farnsworth sold the house
to machinery manufacturer at a small profit. He felt at ease in it”. Who knows: perhaps the Farnsworth
House project was actually the theatre of an impossible love story. In any case, it represents, today,
the truest spirit of Modernism.
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