Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, Laboratory Building, Three-Story Building with Pilotis

Ludwig Mies van der RoheWW-1944-038943

1944·Graphite and charcoal on Strathmore board·76.9 × 101.8 cm (30 × 40 in.)

<p>In this early version of the plan for IIT, Mies imagined that the campus would include a number of buildings raised on slender piloti, or piers, creating an open and continuous green space. While the piloti were not used in the final design because of their high cost, they are one of the features that most directly recall the project’s European antecedents.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1944
Medium: Graphite and charcoal on Strathmore board
Dimensions: 76.9 × 101.8 cm (30 × 40 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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