LESSISX

Born in Germany as Maria Ludwig Michael Mies, the young Ludwig acquired an interest in architecture thanks to his stonemason father. After seconday school, he moved to Berlin where he was able to receive several apprenticeships without ever receiving any formal architectural training. Only after a couple of years working alongside furniture designer Bruno Paul, Mies received his first indepented commission to design a house in the suburbs. His exceptional style and perfect execution impressed prominent architect Peter Behrens, who invited him to join his studio and work alongside figures who later became pioneering artists themselves such as Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius. Even though the democratic Weimar Republic inspired my artists and creative ideas to flourish after World War I, the most important works of Mies from this period remained on paper.

Preoccupied with the necessity of a new architectural vision encapsulating the spirit of modern times, he developed avant-garde ideas that reformed the man-made environment: simplicity of forms; industrial materials such as industrial steel and plate glass; clean, unadorned interiors would become the main elements of his style. In the 1920s and early 1930s, van der Rohe’s reputation took off and he briefly served as the Bauhaus’s third and final director until 1933, when the school closed down due to political pressure. In 1937, he relocated to Chicago, where he continued to design, build and educate. He took up a role as the head of the College of Architecture at the Armour Institute in Chicago, a position that would leave a lasting legacy on both his curriculum and the campus.

The abundent commissions he received after the turmoil of World War II gave van der Rohe an opportunity to execute his first large-scale projects including his pioneering skysrapers of steel covered by large surface areas of glass windows. The Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1949–51) in Chicago and the Seagram Building (1956–58) in New York City are among his major commissions that follow this concept. In the 1960s, van der Rohe continued to design and create public centres like The Neue Nationalgalerie (1968) in Berlin, urban-renewal projects such as Detroit’s Lafayette Park (1959), libraries and offices across the Americas, Mexico and Europe.