"Mies" revisited

This impressive study about the German architect by Detlef Mertins, a monumental monograph on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is entitled simply Mies (Phaidon, 2014). This stunning book, has an new interesting contributions, showing us the main Mies's readings or notes on other books. There you can find a reproduction, a page within a page, of page 64 of Romano Guardini’s 1927 book Letters from Lake Como—a book about modernity and human subjectivity—with Mies’s own annotations penciled in the margins, in a surprisingly ornate and delicate hand.

Mies van der Rohe, Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper project; Berlin, 1921-2, opaque version of photomontage. Courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Photo: Markus Hawlik.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is one of the twentieth century's most influential architects, —like so many architects a self-invented social climber, shape-shifter, and name changer— was an autodidact. Although he did a few years of Latin and arithmetic at church schools around Aachen, Germany, where he was born in 1886, his formal education was minimal. His rise from a family of stonemasons to a gentleman with the manner of a global aristocrat was largely a matter of apprenticeships.

And Mies read. And read. Mertins catalogs the library with which Mies emigrated from Berlin to Chicago in 1938: “Mies brought with him books by evolutionary biologists, botanists, astronomists, physicists, and cosmologists, as well as philosophers, sociologists, zoologists, psychologists, theologians, architects, urbanists, art historians, and art critics. Once in America,” Mertins notes with sly understatement, “he updated his reading.”

His most well-known projects include the Barcelona Pavilion in Spain (1929); the Seagram Building in New York (1954-56); the Farnsworth House (1945-50), 860 and 880 Lakeshore Drive (1945-51) and the IIT Campus (1939-58), all in and around Chicago, and the New National Gallery in Berlin (1962-68). These are only a few of Mies's pavilions, houses, skyscrapers and campuses, which all epitomized a radically new structural and spatial clarity.

The purity of his Mies's architecture is almost surprising in light the diversity of his interests. An auto-didact, Mies studied philosophy and science as well as design. Author Detlef Mertins, spent over ten years researching and writing this comprehensive monograph. In addition to traveling to see the buildings and reading nearly everything written by and about Mies, Mertins also conducted a detailed study of the architectural, philosophical and scientific literature in Mies's own library. The result is a lucid text that not only gives the reader detailed insight into all of Mies's work, but which also explores the variety of ideas that influenced this exceptional figure. The scholarship is rigorous, but the accessible writing and the highly visual, project-by-project presentation also invites those readers who possess an interest in the topic, but who lack detailed knowledge in it.

Arranged in chronological order, the book's five sections and its conclusion offer a synthetic portrait of Mies's career and reception, spanning sixty years, two continents and two world wars. The text tells a continuous story, however, most chapters focus on a significant work (the Seagram Building or the IIT Campus), allowing for an in-depth presentation of photographs and drawings; other chapters focus on a specific event in Mies's life (such Mies's time as the head of the Bauhaus).

All the important buildings are presented through photographs, drawings and diagrams, showing the innovative structures, fine details and material richness that distinguish Mies's work. In addition, many pieces of art and architecture that influenced Mies are also illustrated as well as being discussed in the text.

"Mies"
Author.- Detlef Mertin.
Editions.- English.
Price: €125.00

Cover.- Hardback
Size.- 305 x 208 mm (12 x 9 3/8 in)
Pages.- 560 pp
Images.- 700 illustrations
ISBN.- 9780714839622 | 0714839620

About the Author.

Detlef Mertins (1954–2011) made lasting contributions to the theory and history of modernism in architecture, art, philosophy, and urbanism. From 2002 to 2007, he was Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He also taught at the University of Toronto and, as a visiting professor, at Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University and Rice University. Among his many published books are Modernity Unbound (2011); G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923–1926 (2010), co-edited with Michael Jennings; The Presence of Mies (1994) and Metropolitan Mutations: The Architecture of Emerging Public Spaces (1989). Mertins also published numerous essays in scholarly journals and anthologies, as well as critical writings on contemporary architecture.

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Mies van der Rohe, 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartment Buildings, Chicago, 1948–51; under construction, 1950–1. Courtesy Chicago History Museum.

Mies van der Rohe, Tugendhat House, Brno, 1928–30; interior view along glass wall to dining room and terrace © isifa Image Service s.r.o./Alamy.

Mies van der Rohe, German patent no. 467,242 for his first cantilever chair, issued on August 24, 1927. Courtesy Vitra Design Museum.

Mies, wearing glasses and reading, with model of new IBM building in background, ca. 1969–71. Courtesy Chicago History Museum.

New National Gallery; model with hypothetical exhibition of large abstract expressionist paintings, 1964. Courtesy Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Mies van der Rohe, 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartment Buildings, Chicago, 1948–51; Frank Scherschel, Room reflections, as published by Life magazine, 1957. Courtesy Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

Mies van der Rohe, Westmount Square, Montreal, 1965–8; plaza. Courtesy Chicago History Museum.

Farnsworth House, Plano, Ilinois, (1945-51) - Mies van der Rohe.

Freidrichstrasse Skyscraper Project 1921; transparent version of Mies's photomontage / Freidrichstrasse Skyscraper Project 1921 ; honeycomb version / Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper Project 1921, opaque version of Mies's photomontage - Mies van der Rohe.

Glass Skyscraper Project 1922; elevation study - Mies van der Rohe.

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More information

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aachen on the 27th of Marz of 1886 and died in Chicago on the 17th of August of 1969. He was active in Germany, from 1908 to 1938, when he moved to the USA and where he was until his death. He was also considered a “master” of the Modern Movement, since the 50s, and he was one of the fathers of this movement with Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Mies van der Rohe, who in his childhood was guided by masters such as Hendrik Petrus Berlage or Peter Behrens, always kept tabs on the Villlet-Le-Duc’s rationalism or Karl Friedrich Schinkel eclectic classicism, having a strong connection with the architectural historicism. As he said in his manifesto “Baukunst und Zeiwille” about this: “it is not possible to move on looking back”.

In 1900 he began to work with his father in the stone workshop of the family and shortly afterwards he moved to Berlin to work with Bruno Paul in 1902, designing furniture. He planned his first house in 1907, the “Riehl House” in Neubabelsbers and worked from 1908 to 1911 in Peter Behrens’s studio. There he was influenced by structural techniques and designs based on steel and glass, as the AEG project in Berlin. While he was in Behrens’s studio he designed the Perls House.

In 1912 he opened his own studio and projected a house in The Hague for Kröller-Müller marriage. The studio received few jobs in its first years, but Mies, contrary to architects like Le Corbusier, in his first years already showed an architectural policy to follow, being an architect that changed little his architectural philosophy. To his epoch belonged the Heertrasse House and Urbig House as his principal projects.

In 1913 he moved to the outskirts of Berlin with his wife Ada Bruhn with whom he would have three kids. The family broke up when Mies was posted to Romania during World War I.

In 1920, Ludwig Mies changed his surname to Mies van der Rohe and in 1922 he joined as a member of the “Novembergruppe”. One year later, in 1923, he published the magazine “G” with Doesburg Lisstzky and Rechter. During this period he worked in two houses, the Birck House and the Mosler House. In 1926, Mies van der Rohe held the post of chief commissioner of the German Werkbund exhibition and became his president this year. In this period he projected the Wolf House in Guden and the Hermann Lange House in Krefeld and in 1927, he met the designer Lilly Reich, in the house exhibition of Weissenhof, where he was director, and he planned a steel structure block for her.

In 1929, he received the project the German National Pavilion to the International Exhibition of Barcelona) rebuilt in 1986=, where he included the design of the famous Barcelona Chair.

In 1930, he planned in Brün – present Czech Republic -, the Tugendhat Villa. He managed the Dessau’s Bauhaus until his closure in 1933. The Nazism forced Mies to emigrate to the United States in 1937. He was designated chair of the Architecture department at Armour Institute in 1938, the one that later merged with the Lewis Institute, forming the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and where he took the responsibility to build a considerable extent of the foundations of the Institute from 1939 and 1958. One of the buildings of this complex is the Crown Hall, IIT (1950-1956).

In 1940, he met the person who would be his partner until his death, Lora Marx. He became a citizen of the USA in 1944 and, one year later, he began with the Farnsworth House’s project (1945-1950). During this stage, in 1948, he designed his first skyscraper: the two towers of the Lake Drive Apartments in Chicago, which were finished in 1951. Shortly after, he planned another building of this typology, the Commonwealth Promenade Apartments, from 1953 to 1956.

In 1958 he projected his most important work: the Segram Building in New York. This building has 37 storeys, covered with glass and bronze, which was built and planned with Philip Johnson. He retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology the same year. He also built more towers and complexes as: the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963-1969) and the Westmount Square (1965-1968) and designed the New Square and Office Tower of The City of London (1967).

From 1962 to 1968, he built the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which would be his last legacy to the architecture. The building that rose as an exhibition hall is made of steel, glass and granite.

He died in Chicago on the 17th of August of 1969 leaving behind a large legacy and influence to the next generations.

The Mies van der Rohe’s most famous sentences are “Less is more” and “God is in the details”.