ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN THEORY

REPORT ON: LUDVIG MIES VAN DER ROHE AND HIS WORKS

PREPARED BY : ACHIN ASHISH

INTRODUCTION CAREER IMPORTANT WORKS CHARACTERISTICS OF WORK IMPORTANT STRUCTURES -FRANSFORTH HOUSE - LAKE SHORE DRIVE APARTMENTS -ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CONCLUSION

BORN - March 27, 1886, Aachen, Kingdom of Prussia,German Empire. Died -August 17, 1969 (aged 83),Chicago, Illinois, USA.

He was a German architect. Nationality - German 1886-1944/American 1944-1969. Awards - Order Pour le Mrite (1959) Royal Gold Medal (1959) AIA Gold Medal (1960) Presidential Medal of Freedom(1963) Work Buildings Barcelona Pavilion Tugendhat House Crown Hall Farnsworth House 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Seagram Building New National Gallery Toronto - Dominion Centre

Mies, like many of his post World War I contemporaries, sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, along with Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, are widely regarded as the pioneering masters of Modern architecture. Mies, like many of his post World War I contemporaries, sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras. Ludwig Mies renamed himself as part of his rapid transformation from a tradesman's son to an architect working with Berlin's cultural elite, adding "van der" and his mother's surname "Rohe",

Mies worked in his father's stone-carving shop and at several local design firms before he moved to Berlin joining the office of interior designer Bruno Paul. He began his architectural career as an apprentice at the studio of Peter Behrens from 1908 to 1912, where he was exposed to the current design theories and to progressive German culture, working alongside Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier Mies served as construction manager of the Embassy of the German Empire in Saint Petersburg under Behrens. . His talent was quickly recognized and he soon began independent commissions, despite his lack of a formal college-level education. He began his independent professional career designing upper class homes, joining the movement seeking a return to the purity of early nineteenth century Germanic domestic styles. He admired the broad proportions, regularity of rhythmic elements, attention to the relationship of the man-made to nature, and compositions using simple cubic forms of the early nineteenth century Prussian Neo-Classical architectKarl Friedrich Schinkel. He dismissed the eclectic and cluttered classical styles so common at the turn of the twentieth century as irrelevant to the modern times.

After World War I, Mies began, while still designing traditional neoclassical homes, a parallel experimental effort. He joined his avant-garde peers in the long-running search for a new style that would be suitable for the modern industrial age. The weak points of traditional styles had been under attack by progressive theorists since the mid-nineteenth century, primarily for the contradictions of hiding modern construction technology with a facade of ornamented traditional styles. While continuing his traditional neoclassical design practice Mies began to develop visionary projects that, though mostly unbuilt, rocketed him to fame as an architect capable of giving form that was in harmony with the spirit of the emerging modern society. He joined the avant-garde Bauhaus design school as their director of architecture, adopting and developing their functionalist application of simple geometric forms in the design of useful objects. Like many other avant-garde architects of the day, Mies based his own architectural theories and principles on his own personal re-combination of ideas developed by many other thinkers and designers who had pondered the flaws of the traditional design styles. Mies found appeal in the use of simple rectilinear and planar forms, clean lines, pure use of color, and the extension of space around and beyond interior walls

He believed that the configuration and arrangement of every architectural element must contribute to a unified expression.
Yet his buildings also seem very direct and simple when viewed in person. Every aspect of his architecture, from overall concept to the smallest detail, supports his effort to express the modern age. Mies found appeal in the use of simple rectilinear and planar forms, clean lines, pure use of color, and the extension of space around and beyond interior walls . ideas of eradication of the superficial and unnecessary, replacing elaborate applied ornament with the straightforward display of materials and forms. Mies He called his buildings "skin and bones" architecture. He sought a rational approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design. He is often associated with the aphorisms "less is more" and "God is in the details. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. He strived towards an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of free-flowing open space.

1.FRANSWORTH HOUSE. 2. 860-880Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, Illinois, USA 1951. 3. Illinois Institute of Technology

1.

FRANSWORTH HOUSE

The Farnsworth House was designed and constructed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe between 1945-51. It is a one-room weekend retreat in a once-rural setting, located 55 miles (89 km) southwest of Chicago's downtown on a 60-acre (24 ha) estate site, adjoining the Fox River, south of the city of Plano, Illinois.

The Farnsworth House is one of the most significant of Mies van der Rohes works. the I-beams of the Farnsworth House are both structural and expressive. . In addition, the one-story Farnsworth house with its isolated site allowed a degree of transparency and simplicity impossible in the larger, more urban projects. The Farnsworth house with its continuous glass walls is an even simpler interpretation of an idea. Here the purity of the cage is undisturbed. Neither the steel columns from which it is suspended nor the independent floating terrace break the taut skin. First conceived in 1945 as a country retreat for the client, Dr. Edith Farnsworth, the house as finally built appears as a structure of Platonic perfection against a complementary ground of informal landscape. This landscape is an integral aspect of Mies van derRohes aesthetic conception. The house faces the Fox River just to the south and is raised 5 feet 3 inches above the ground, its thin, white I-beam supports contrasting with the darker, sinuous trunks of the surrounding trees. The calm stillness of the man-made object contrasts also with the subtle movements, sounds, and rhythms of water, sky and vegetation. With its emphatically planar floors and roof suspended on the widely-spaced, steel columns, the one-story house appears to float above the ground, infinitely extending the figurative space of the hovering planes into the surrounding site.

Stories: 2 Total Living Area: 3505 Sq. Ft. First Floor: 2725 Sq. Ft. Second Floor: 780 Sq. Ft. Bonus: 387 Sq. Ft. Bedrooms: 3 Full Baths: 3, Half Baths: 1 Width: 90 Ft. 6 In. Depth: 84 Ft. Garage Size: 3 Foundation: Basement, Crawlspace, Slab

first floor plan

Mies created a 1,500-square-foot (140 m2) house that is widely recognized as an iconic masterpiece of International Style of architecture. The extensive use of clear floor-to-ceiling glass opens the interior to its natural surroundings to an extreme degree. Two distinctly expressed horizontal slabs, which form the roof and the floor, sandwich an open space for living. The slab edges are defined by exposed steel structural members painted pure white. The house is elevated 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) above a flood plain by eight wide flange steel columns which are attached to the sides of the floor and ceiling slabs. The slabs' ends extend beyond the column supports, creating cantilevers. The house seems to float weightlessly above the ground it occupies. A third floating slab, an attached terrace, acts as a transition between the living area and the ground. The house is accessed by two sets of wide steps connecting ground to terrace and then to porch. Here he applied the concept of an unobstructed space that is flexible for use by people. The interior appears to be a single open room, its space ebbing and flowing around two wood blocks; one a wardrobe cabinet and the other a kitchen, toilet, and fireplace block (the "core"). . Very private areas such as toilets, and mechanical rooms are enclosed within the core. The notion of a single room that can be freely used or zoned in any way, with flexibility to accommodate changing uses, free of interior supports, enclosed in glass and supported by a minimum of structural framing located at the exterior, is the architectural ideal that defines Mies' American career.

Location: 860880 N. Lake Shore DriveChicago, Illinois Built: 1949 Architect: Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe Architectural style: Modern Governing body: Private

The scheme consists of two identical 26-story towers placed 46 feet apart with their long axes set perpendicular to each other. The steel skeletal frame is based on a 21-foot grid and is clearly expressed in the elevations, indicated by black-painted steel sheets covering the fireproofed columns and beams. Each bay is subdivided into four window units by three wide-flange steel mullions. A supplementary mullion is welded to the face of the exterior by the others. Within these divisions aluminum-framed floor-to- ceiling windows are set. The significance of this work is a pioneer curtain-wall expression as well as a fulfillment of the all-glass skyscraper schemes proposed by Mies three decades earlier.

lake shore apartments, 1951

860880 Lake Shore Drive is a twin pair of glass-and-steel apartment towers on N. Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan in theStreeterville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Construction began in 1949 and the project was completed in 1951. They were added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 28, 1980. The 26 floor, 254 ft (82 m) tall towers were designed by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. 860880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments embody a Modernistic tone with their verticality, grids of steel and glass curtain walls (a hallmark of Mies skyscrapers), and complete lack of ornamentation. The twin towers are 26 stories high. The buildings are 46 feet apart. The steel skeletal frames rest on a 21 foot grid and are uniform in their design. The building was originally designed for 860 to contain 90 three bedroom apartments and 880 to hold 158 one bedroom apartments. Many of the units have been combined to enlarge living spaces.
[10]

Location Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. Campus Urban, 120 acres (48.6 ha)

Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, ind ustrial technology, information technology,design, and law. It is a member of the Association of Independent Technological Universities. IIT is divided into: four colleges (Armour College of Engineering, College of Science and Letters, College of Architecture, Chicago-Kent College of Law), two institutes (Institute of Design, Institute of Psychology), two schools (School of Applied Technology, Stuart School of Business), and a number of research centers. Van der Rohe's master plan for the IIT campus was one of the most ambitious projects he ever conceived and the campus, with twenty of his works, is the greatest concentration of his buildings in the world.The layout of the campus departs radically from "traditional college quadrangles and limestone buildings".[ The materials are inspired by the factories and warehouses of Chicago's South Side and "embod[y] 20th century methods and materials: steel and concrete frames with curtain walls of brick and glass. ."[ The campus was landscaped by van der Rohe's close colleague at IIT, Alfred Caldwell

CAMPUS IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR BUILDINGS

S.R. Crown Hall McCormick Tribune Campus Center State Street Village Academic Campus The closest high-rise, Stateway Gardens, was located just south of the IIT campus boundary, the last building of which was demolished in 2006.

MACHINERY HALL

LIBRARY

El train, Illinois Institute of Technology Campus Center, Chicago, November 2005

Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, November 2005

ROOF TRUSS