biography
| name: |
Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig
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| |
also spelled Miës, originally Ludwig Mies
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pronunciation:
[mees van duh rohu
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1886–1969)
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| biography:
| Architect, born in Aachen, Germany. As a young architect and designer in Berlin, he foreshadowed modern architecture with innovative designs for tubular-steel furniture, such as the cantilevered ‘Barcelona chair’ (1929), and steel and glass skyscrapers. He directed the Bauhaus, Dessau (1930–3), which he closed after Nazi threats. Though he had built only 19 buildings, he was internationally famous when he went to the USA (1937), where he founded and directed the architecture department at the Armour Institute, Chicago (later Illinois Institute of Technology) (1938–58), and designed the institute's master plan and a number of campus buildings. He celebrated contemporary technology and materials, and under his influence skyscraper construction switched from masonry to metal and glass. Following his credo, ‘less is more’, his buildings were characterized by accessible, simple designs devoid of applied ornament, and were composed of spaces rather than masses. A founder of the International style, his influence on 20th-c architecture can hardly be overestimated. His starkly simple German Pavilion at the International Exposition in Barcelona (1929) crystallized public acceptance of modern architecture. His buildings include the glass Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago (1948–51), the Seagram Building, New York (1956–8, with Philip Johnson), and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1958, 1973). |
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