MIES VAN DER ROHE

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

AR. RAJSHREE MATHUR GAURIKA MEHTA
KASHISH MRIG
MUDITA SINGH
UJJWALA HARJAI
3-B
 INTRODUCTION
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), a
German-born architect and educator, is
widely acknowledged as one of the 20th
century's greatest architects.
• By emphasizing open space and revealing the
industrial materials used in construction, he
helped define modern architecture. Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe
• He is widely recognized as one of the pioneers
of modern architecture.
 PHILOSOPHIES OF MIES VAN DER ROHE

• Mies' buildings, beyond merely affecting

our lives, endow them with greater
significance and beauty.
• The absence of any decorative treatment
was fundamental.
• His buildings radiate the confidence,
rationality, and elegance of their creator .
• His buildings were free of ornamentation .
• His works confess the essential elements
of our lives.
• He followed the reductionist approach.
 STYLE OF MIES VAN DER ROHE
• Mies, like many of his post-World
War I contemporaries, sought to
establish a new architectural style
that could represent modern times.
• Mies' architecture has been
described as being expressive of the
industrial age.
• He created an influential twentieth-
century architectural style, stated
with extreme clarity and simplicity “ LESS IS MORE “
 FEATURES
• His mature buildings made use of modern
materials such as industrial steel and plate
glass to define interior spaces.
• He 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.
• Mies found appeal in the use of simple
rectilinear and planar forms, clean lines, pure
use of color, and the extension of space
around and beyond interior walls.
 SIGNIFICANCE
• Mies pursued an ambitious lifelong mission to create
a new architectural language that could be used to
represent the new era of technology and production.
He saw a need for an architecture expressive of and in
harmony with his epoch.
• He applied a disciplined design process using rational
thought to achieve his spiritual goals.
• One notable way that Mies connected his buildings
with nature was by extending outdoor plaza tiles
into the floor of a lobby, synthesizing the exterior
and interior spaces of the site. The device
accentuated the effortless flow between natural
conditions and artificial structures. This characteristic
is often found in his large building projects such as
the Seagram Building.
 CHARACTER OF WORKS
• Simplicity and clarity of forms and elimination of "unnecessary
detail“ (simple rectangular forms).
• Materials at 90 degrees to each other
• Visual expression of structure (as opposed to the hiding of
structural elements), exposed and very refined structural details.
• The related concept of "Truth to materials", meaning that the true
nature or natural appearance of a material ought to be seen rather
than concealed or altered to represent something else.
• Open, flexible plans and multi functional spaces.
• Use of industrially-produced materials; adoption of the machine
aesthetic. (widespread use of glass and steel)
 STRUCTURE IS PARAMOUNT:
LESS IS MORE
• For Mies, structure was paramount,
hence his emphasis on the rectilinear
frame constructed of familiar building
elements, including most importantly
the wide-flange beam.
• Mies believed in creating friendly
functional structures to serve people,
rather than decorative structures to
serve historical notions of artistic style.
His focus on minimalism was
expressed in his famous aphorism “less
is more.”
 SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL
• In the 1940s, a "Second Chicago School" emerged from the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
and his efforts of education at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Its first and purest
expression was the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1951) and their technological
achievements.
• It was Mies van der Rohe, supported by a general postwar desire in America for "modern" rather
than "traditional" things, who acted as the catalyst for the emergence of the Second Chicago
School.
• His first job was the reconstitution of the IIT campus, one of the most ambitious projects he ever
conceived. Its revolutionary layout, landscaping and use of new materials, such as steel and
concrete frames with curtain walls of brick and glass, exemplifies 20th century thinking - just like
the rest of his architectural commissions.
 FURNITURE
• Mies, often in collaboration with Lilly Reich, designed modern furniture pieces using new
industrial technologies that have become popular classics, such as the Barcelona chair and
table, the Brno chair, and the Tugendhat chair.

BRNO CHAIR BARCELONA CHAIR TUGENDHAT CHAIR

 BARCELONA PAVILION
• The German pavilion at the Barcelona
exposition had simplicity and clarity of
means and intentions—everything is
open, nothing is concealed.”
• Free of external ornament, the building
was made of the most luxurious
materials. Walls were fashioned of thin
plates of luminous semi-precious stone,
from green polished marble to golden
onyx.
• They didn’t physically limit space.
• Materials: Glass, steel and four types of
marbles.
 TUGENDHAT HOUSE
• His design was once again revolutionary
and combined the seamless flow from
outdoors to indoors.
• He dealt with the extreme slope by
dividing the front and back of the house
into public and private facades. Facing the
street, the building is only one story, but
it's two stories on the garden side. The
home's decor boasted several of Mies
finest pieces of original furniture,
including the Brno chair, the Tugendhat
chair, and the X coffe
 FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SECOND FLOOR PLAN

GROUND FLOOR PLAN TERRACE PLAN

 FARNSWORTH HOUSE
• Farnsworth House, pioneering steel-and-glass
house in Plano, Illinois, U.S., designed
by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in
1951.
• The structure’s modern classicism epitomizes
the International Style of architecture and
Mies’s dictum “less is more.” It is set on the
floodplain of the Fox River and is one of only
three houses built by Mies in the United States.
• (The other two are the Robert McCormick
house [now part of the Elmhurst Art Museum]
in Elmhurst, Illinois, and the Morris Greenwald
house in Weston, Connecticut.)
• The house invites nature in through
continuous glass walls and is anchored
delicately to the forest floor.
• The simplicity of the design, precision in
detailing, and careful choice of materials
made this and others of Mies’s buildings
stand out from the mass of mid- century
modernism.
• To give the occupant full advantage of the
site’s natural beauty, Mies’s design
featured an all-glass exterior.
• Intended as a vacation home or weekend
retreat, the house lacked storage space,
closets, and other necessities of full-time
living, which the architect ignored in favor
of an aesthetic perfectionism.
• The house’s main structural support consists of
eight white vertical I-beams, which connect the
rectangular roof and floor slabs with floor-to-
ceiling plate glass.
• The structure is suspended on those beams
some 5 feet (1.5 metres) above the ground and
more than 8 feet (2.5 metres) above the Fox
River, which lies just 100 feet (30 metres) to the
south.
• A third of the slab is an open-air porch (which
Farnsworth had screened in after the house was
finished), and the only operable windows are
two small hopper units (which are hinged at the
bottom) at the eastern end in the bedroom area.
• A rectangular offset patio, covered with the
same travertine as the floor slab of the house,
sits a few steps below the house.
• A central core contains all services, two
bathrooms, a kitchen with a
continuous stainless steel countertop on the
north side, and a primavera wood living space
and fireplace on the south side.
• I-beams connect just below the roof and
patio surfaces, their welds polished smooth to
make the connection invisible.
• Smoothness and continuity are also apparent
in the details of the other surfaces of the
house, from the floors to the wood panels.
• Mies removed all evidence of seams and
fastenings.
• Though the house was designed to withstand
flooding, increased development upriver has
caused two damaging floods.
 CHICAGO FEDERAL CENTRE
• The Chicago Federal Center, designed
by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed
in 1974, actually consists of three buildings
which are arranged around and define
the Chicago Federal Plaza.
• On the eastern side of South Dearborn Street
sits the 30-story Everett M. Dirksen U.S.
Courthouse. On the western side, the 42-story
John C. Kluczynski Federal Building and the
single story Post Office define the plaza.
• The complex as a whole was completed in
1974, five years after Mies's death.
• It unifies two themes that he repeated
throughout his career: the two high-rise blocks,
which flesh out ideas suggested in his Seagram
Building in New York; and the large, open space
of the Post Office building, which is similar to
other low-rise projects such as the nearby S.R.
Crown Hall.
• The project has its roots in a 1950s plan by the
U.S. Government to update federal services
nationwide.
• Mies received the commission itself in 1959. One
condition of the design was that the
old Chicago Federal Building - which occupied the
block on which the Kluczynski Federal Building
and Post Office now stand – had to remain
operational until the courthouse could be
relocated to the new building across the street.
• The area available for the new courthouse,
combined with its space requirements,
effectively fixed the Dirksen Courthouse at
30 stories, and also heavily influenced the
28-foot structural bays which Mies used
throughout all three buildings.
• For the remainder of the complex though,
Mies developed a number of potential
designs - including one where the Federal
Building and the Post office were combined
into one building, and another where a 30-
story Federal Building mirrored the
courthouse, with the Post office in between
- before finally settling on the current
scheme.
• The complex gained its finishing flourish after
completion in 1974, with Alexander Calder's
'Flamingo' sculpture being unveiled in the
Federal Plaza.
• This 53-foot, sinuous, scarlet red sculpture
provides a beautiful counterpoint to Mies's
muted, linear buildings.
• Now, the Chicago Federal Center provides a
crucial civic space to the city - just one example
of the extraordinary architectural legacy that
Mies van der Rohe left to the city of Chicago.
THANK YOU