Mies van der Rohe
NAME: Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig
ACHIEVEMENTS: One of the most important architects of the 20th Century in the International Style
NICKNAME/ALIAS: real name: Mies, Maria Ludwig Michael
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: March 27, 1886; Steinkaulstrasse 29, Aachen, Germany
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: August 19, 1969, Chicago, IL. Age 83
DISCIPLINE: Architecture
FIELD: Commercial and Residential
LANGUAGE: German; English
PARENTS: Father, Michael Mies, married Mother, Amalie Rohe, on October 21, 1876
SIBLINGS: Two Brothers: Ewald Philipp Mies, October 13, 1877; Carl Michael Mies, May 18, 1879 (died at age two); Two Sisters: Anna Marie Elisabeth Mies, September 16, 1881; Maria Johanna Sophie Mies, December 30, 1883
SPOUSE: Ada Auguste Bruhn Mies, born January 25, 1885, married in a Luthern ceremony in Berlin-Wilmersdorf on April 10, 1913; separated in 1921
CHILDREN: Three daughters: Dorothea “Muck” Mies, March 2, 1914; Marianne Mies, November 12, 1915; Waltraut Mies, June 15, 1917
EDUCATION: In Aachen, Germany, attended public elementary school until age 10 then transferred to higher ranking Cathedral school.
“Gewerbeschule” (trade school) at age 13 for two years.
At age 15 he worked as a building apprentice for a year, then as a draftsman in local workshops and studios.
He also worked in the family stone-carving business as a youth
MAJOR WORK: German Pavilion, Barcelona, Spain, 1928-29 (demolished 1930); Tugendhat House, Brno, Czech Republic, 1930 (model); Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, 1946-50 (model); Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, Illinois, 1948-51; Crown Hall, Chicago, Illinois, 1950-56; Seagram Building, New York, New York, 1954-58; New National Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 1962-68 (model)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Mies developed a lifelong love of beautiful, often extravagant building materials as a youth working in his family’s stone carving business. He had grown up near one of the most ostentatious residential streets of Wilhelmine architecture. Jugendstil (the German version of Art Nouveau) was a “revolt against the imperialist-materialist values of late 19th-century urban civilization” (Schulze 21). It was also the first step in Mies’s long career of moving away from the individually hand crafted houses with all the trimmings, to minimalist, almost ethereal, structures.
Mies was just 22 when he moved to the studio of Peter Behrens, a follower of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the leading architect of the period. Walter <colleague was> Gropius* was an equally talented fellow employee and it was here that the rivalry began that lasted until their death.
In addition to Schinkel and Behrens, Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage and American architect <influenced by> Lloyd Wright* were major influences on Mies’s efforts to reduce architecture to a minimum. Mies’s infamous motto became ‘Less is More‘. When Mies eventually moved to America, he met Wright and the two became friends until a falling out many years later.
Mies left Behrens after four years to open his own studio in Berlin. The following year he married Ada Bruhn who had intellect, grace, and, most importantly, family money and connections that gave Mies contact with the upper class and the money to live his life accordingly.
They eventually had three daughters, but Mies, dedicated to his craft and to pursuit of his own happiness, was not a particularly devoted family man nor faithful husband and they separated by the time Mies was thirty-five. They never divorced and Mies continued to rely on her family money throughout most of his life in Germany.
After their separation, Mies decided he needed a classier name because ‘mies’, had negative connotations in German. French Swiss architect Charles Jeanneret, whom Mies had met briefly in Behrens studio, had recently changed his name to Le Corbusier and he continued to influence Mies professionally for many years. Following his lead, Mies created a name more suited to the persona he had adopted. To Ludwig Mies, he added his mother’s maiden name ‘Rohe’ joined by the Dutch ‘van der’.
In the years following World War I, an acute housing shortage in Germany was the perfect breeding ground for the ‘New Architecture’. By 1926, at age 42, Mies became vice-president of the Werkbund and his power and influence were assured.
As artistic director of the exhibition, which included housing projects as well as furniture design, Mies said, “I consider the industrializations of building methods the key problem of the day for architects and builders. Our technologists must and will succeed in inventing a material which can be industrially manufactured and processed. All the parts will be made in a factory and the work at the site will consist only of assemblage, requiring extremely few man-hours. This will greatly reduce building costs. Then the new architecture will come into its own.” For Mies, especially during his American years, this came to mean concrete, steel, and glass.
‘Universal Space’ became one of his central themes, and modern architecture in general became known as ‘International Style’. He met up with <knew> Le Corbusier* again and also became involved with designer Lilly Reich who helped refine his tastes in interior materials other than stone or glass, although Mies left her and her controlling ways behind when he fled to America.
His former colleague Walter Gropius founded the internationally acclaimed avant-garde Bauhaus school of art and design in Weimar in 1919. Once the Nazis were in power, Gropius thought that a less controversial director than he might better suit, and asked Mies to take over and he eventually accepted. It remained open as a state institution until 1932 and as a private school in Berlin for another year.
With Gropius and Marcel Breuer (of Breuer chair fame) gone from Bauhaus, and Germany altogether, Mies decided it was a good time for him to get away from Nazi oppression. He and Lilly moved to Switzerland where he taught students and designed furniture to make ends meet.
Philip Cortelyou Johnson, director of the Department of Architecture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the United States, which now houses the Mies van der Rohe archives, helped put together MOMA’s first modern architecture exhibition - Mies’s first public appearance, and the beginning of his fame, in America.
Reluctantly, and not without demands, Mies, who spoke only German at this time, accepted a position as director of the School of Architecture in Chicago. Also, for the first time, Mies began supporting his estranged wife Ada and continued to do so until her death from cancer in 1951. He lost his daughter Waltraut to the same disease seven years later.
Mies met Lora Marx at a New Year’s party in 1940 and she remained his companion until the end of his years.
Though Mies’s influence was large, remarkably few of his always expensive, often engineering challenged, futuristic designs had actually been built in Germany, but Americans embraced them, especially after their triumph in World War II.
The Art Deco skyscrapers that had sprung up in the late 1930’s now gave way to tall, simple, shining glass towers, a trend that would continue for the next twenty-five years. Indeed, Mies’s followers became more entrenched in his philosophy than Mies, who had continued to evolve over the years, was himself.
By the early 1960’s failed attempts at urban renewal, which often destroyed the quality of neighborhoods along with its undesirable slums, caused a new revolution. Not surprisingly, there was a backlash to Miesian architecture after his death and decline of his considerable influence. “Less is Bore,” proclaimed Robert Venturi in his book ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.’
Wright had died in 1959, LeCorbusier in 1965. Just weeks after the death of Gropius in 1969, Mies succumbed to pneumonia, a consequence of esophageal cancer, at age 83. The age of New Architecture died with them.
ASSESSMENT: Mies van der Rohe is remembered as one of the most influential architects of the Twentieth Century
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Mies van der Rohe, major modern architect
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Schulze, Franz, Mies van der Rohe, A Critical Biography, The University of Chigaco Press, Chicago and London, 1985.
“Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig”, Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2001,
http://encarta.msn.com
“Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - Great Buildings Online”
http://greatbuildings.com/architects/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe.html
Bauhaus School 1919-1933, Mies van der Rohe”,
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~alilley/baumies.html
“Bauhaus School 1919-1933”,
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~alilley/bauhaus.html
“Bauhaus”, Encyclopedia.com, Electric Library,
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articles/01201.html
“Peter Behrens - Great Buildings Online”,
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Peter_Behrens.html
“Bauhaus School 1919-1933, Walter Gropius”,
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~alilley/baugropius.html