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, Mies van der Rohe,
GERMAN PAVILION Interior, FARNSWORTH HOUSE Interior,
Barcelona Expo, 1929 Illinois, 1946-51
End