Resor House, Entrance Foyer, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Perspective

Ludwig Mies van der RoheWW-1937-038918

1937·Pencil and colored pencil on paper·22.2 × 33 cm (8 3/4 × 13 in.)

<p>German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe first came to the United States to design a house for advertising executives Stanley B. Resor and Helen Lansdowne Resor’s large ranch in Wyoming. Mies’s unbuilt design features a flat roof, open plan, and cruciform columns—all elements that recall his earlier residential projects in Europe. As these sketches show, however, Mies combined this modernist vocabulary with new features inspired by the rugged American landscape including a massive, double-sided stone chimney bisecting<br>the open-plan living area.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1937
Medium: Pencil and colored pencil on paper
Dimensions: 22.2 × 33 cm (8 3/4 × 13 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Artist

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Drawing

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German-American architect and furniture designer whose stripped-down aesthetic defined modernism in the twentieth century. He pioneered the steel-frame glass building and the open-plan interior, reducing architectural form to its essential structural elements. His Barcelona Chair and Brno Chair became canonical pieces of twentieth-century design, their tubular steel frames and leather surfaces exemplifying his dictum 'less is more.' After emigrating to the United States in 1938, he directed the Illinois Institute of Technology and designed the Farnsworth House and the Seagram Building in New York. His influence on post-war architecture and industrial design remains foundational.

Aachen, Germany

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