Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Born: 1886 | Died: 1969

Architect

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aachen in western Germany and later moved to Berlin where he became part of the avant-garde Bauhaus design school and served as the director of architecture from 1930 to 1933, adopting and developing their application of simple geometric forms in the design of useful objects.

He built very little during WWII when his style was renounced by the National Socialists. When Mies van der Rohe moved to the United States in 1937, his name and style were already well known. Soon after he arrived in the country, he gained an appointment as director of the School of Architecture at Chicago's Armour Institute (later the Illinois Institute of Technology).

Mies van der Rohe served as the school's director for the next 20 years, and, by the time he retired in 1958, the school had become world-renowned for its disciplined teaching methods as well as for its campus, which Mies van der Rohe had designed in 1939-41. He became an American citizen in 1944.

Mies van der Rohe was a pioneer and master of modern architecture. He created an influential twentieth-century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. His structures made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define austere but elegant spaces.

His architecture became an accepted mode of building for large American corporations. Iconic works like the Farnsworth House in Plano, IL, and the Seagram Building on New York’s Park Avenue are among Mies's greatest and most renowned works and demonstrate his famous principle that “less is more.” His modern furniture is known for fine craftsmanship, as embodied in his “Barcelona Chair.” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe died in 1969 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

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