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Ludwig Mies Van
Der Roche
- Wholesale Designer Furniture
Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies (March 27,
1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was
commonly referred to and addressed by his surname, Mies, by his
colleagues, students, writers, and others.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, along with Walter Gropius and Le
Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters
of Modern
architecture. Mies, like many of his post World War I
contemporaries, sought to establish a new architectural style
that could represent
modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own
eras. He created an influential 20th century architectural
style, stated with
extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of
modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to
define
interior spaces. He strived towards an architecture with a
minimal framework of structural order balanced against the
implied freedom of
free-flowing open space. He called his buildings "skin and
bones" architecture. He sought a rational approach that would
guide the
creative process of architectural design, and is known for his
use of the aphorisms "less is more" and "God is in the details".
Mies worked in his father's stone-carving shop and at several
local design firms before he moved to Berlin joining the office
of interior
designer Bruno Paul. He began his architectural career as an
apprentice at the studio of Peter Behrens from 1908 to 1912,
where he
was exposed to the current design theories and to progressive
German culture, working alongside Walter Gropius and Le
Corbusier. Mies
served as construction manager of the Embassy of the German
Empire in Saint Petersburg under Behrens. His talent was quickly
recognized and
he soon began independent commissions, despite his lack of a
formal college-level education. A physically imposing,
deliberative, and
reticent man, Ludwig Mies renamed himself as part of his rapid
transformation from a tradesman's son to an architect working
with
Berlin's cultural elite, adding the more aristocratic surname
"van der Rohe". He began his independent professional career
designing upper
class homes in traditional Germanic domestic styles. He admired
the broad proportions, regularity of rhythmic elements,
attention to the
relationship of the manmade to nature, and compositions using
simple cubic volumes of the early 19th century Prussian
Neo-Classical
architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, while dismissing the eclectic
and cluttered classical so common at the turn of the century as
irrelevant
from the modern zeitgeist.
After World War I, Mies began, while still designing traditional
custom homes, a parallel experimental effort in international
style,
joining his avant-garde peers in the long-running search for a
new style for a new industrial democracy. The weak points of
traditional
styles had been under attack by progressive theorists since the
mid-nineteenth century, primarily for attaching historical
ornament
unrelated to a modern structure's underlying construction. Their
mounting criticism of the historical styles gained substantial
cultural credibility after the disaster of World War I, widely
seen as a failure of the old order of imperial leadership of
Europe. The
classical revival styles were particularly reviled by many as
the architectural symbol of a now-discredited aristocratic
system.
Boldly abandoning ornament altogether, Mies made a dramatic
debut with his stunning competition proposal for the faceted
all-glass
Friedrichstraße skyscraper in 1921, followed by a curved version
in 1922. He continued with a series of pioneering projects,
culminating
in his two European masterworks: the temporary German Pavilion
for the Barcelona exposition (often called the Barcelona
Pavilion) in 1929 (a
reconstruction is now built on the original site) and the
elegant Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, completed in
1930.
While continuing his traditional design practice Mies began to
develop isionary projects that, though mostly unbuilt, rocketed
him to fame
as a progressive architect. He worked with the progressive
design magazine G which started in July 1923. He developed
prominence as
architectural director of the Werkbund, organizing the
influential Weissenhof prototype modernist housing exhibition.
He was also one of
the founders of the architectural association Der Ring. 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.
Like many other avant garde architects of the day, Mies based
his own architectural theories and principles on his own
personal
re-combinations of ideas developed by many other thinkers and
designers who had attacked the flaws of the traditional design
styles,
defined new criteria, and created alternative design solutions.
Mies' modernist thinking was influenced by the aesthetic credos
of Russian Constructivism with their ideology of "efficient"
sculptural
constructions using modern industrial materials. 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 interiors
expounded by the Dutch De Stijl group. In particular, the
layering of
functions in space and the clear articulation of parts as
expressed by Gerrit Rietveld appealed to Mies.
Like other architects in Europe, Mies was enthralled with the
free-flowing inter-connected rooms which encompass their outdoor
surroundings as demonstrated by the open floor plans of the
American Prairie Style work of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The theories of Adolf Loos found resonance with Mies,
particularly the ideas of eradication of ornament and the
casting off of the
superficial, the use of unadorned but rich materials, the
nobility of anonymity, and an admiration for the unfettered
pragmatism of American
engineering structures and machines.
Mies adopted an ambitious lifelong mission to create not only a
new architectural style, but also a solid intellectual
foundation for 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, just as Gothic
architecture was for an era of spiritualism. He applied a
disciplined
design process using rational thought to achieve his spiritual
goals. He adopted the idea that architecture communicated the
meaning and
significance of the culture in which it exists. The
self-educated Mies painstakingly studied the great philosophers
and thinkers of the past and of the day to enhance his own
understanding of the character and
essential qualities of the times he lived in. More than perhaps
any other practising pioneer of modernism, Mies used philosophy
as a basis
for his work. Mies' architecture was created at a high level of
abstraction, and his own descriptions of his work leave much
room for
interpretation. Yet his buildings also seem very direct and
simple when viewed in person.
Opportunities for commissions dwindled with the worldwide
depression after 1929. In the early 1930s, Mies served briefly
as the last
Director of the faltering Bauhaus, at the request of his friend
and competitor Walter Gropius. After 1933, Nazi political
pressure soon
forced Mies to close the government-financed school, a victim of
its previous association with socialism, communism, and other
ideologies.
He built very little in these years (one built commission was
Philip Johnson's New York apartment); his style was rejected by
the Nazis as
not "German" in character. Frustrated and unhappy, he left his
homeland reluctantly in 1937 as he saw his opportunity for any
future
building commissions vanish, accepting a residential commission
in Wyoming and then an offer to head an architectural school in
Chicago.
When the refugee from the heavy-handed and constricting order of
the Nazi government arrived in the United States after 30 years
of
practice in Germany, his reputation as a pioneer of modern
architecture was already established by American promoters of
the
international style. |
