Posted
on March 27, 2015
I
really love to discover autodidacts.
(An
autodidact is someone who is self-educated.)
Born
in Germany on this date in 1886, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was largely
self-educated but managed to become an architect. As a matter of
fact, even without the university training of most architects, Mies
was so important in his field, he is considered one of the pioneers
of modern architecture...
(...along
with such luminaries as Frank Lloyd Wright!)
Modern
architecture such as Mies's is clean and streamlined, seemingly
simple. Mies called it skin-and-bones architecture; some people call
it minimalist. It is not fussy or ornate.
Mies
often said, “Less is more.”
Mies
was connected to the famous German art school known as Bauhaus
(School of Building); Bauhaus was dedicated to creating a world in
which all arts, including architecture, would be brought together. It
was all about modernist thought, art, and design. Mies was the third
architect-director of the school, serving from 1930 until the
school's closure in 1933. Why did Mies and the other directors decide
to close the school? The school under pressure from the Nazis, who
thought the school to be a center of communist ideas. To the Nazis,
modern art and architecture weren't “German enough.”
But
even with the school closed, Bauhaus continued to influence art,
architecture, and design as the students and pupils left Germany and
emigrated all over the world.
Mies
ended up in the U.S., and he took the effort to become a full-fledged
citizen. He lived in the United States the rest of his life, becoming
the head of the architecture department of the Illinois Institute of
Technology and working on buildings on the campus and elsewhere in
Chicago. He built homes for wealthy buildings, the Seagram Building
in New York City, and many other projects.
What
do you think of his work?
 |
| Mies designed some furniture as well as many buildings. |
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