Glass House Studies, Multiple Views

Ludwig Mies van der RoheWW-1949-038768

1949·Black ink on Four Star Onion Skin paper·21.8 × 28 cm (8 5/8 × 11 1/16 in.)

<p>During the 1950s, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began working on a large project to translate his steel-and-glass buildings into another arena: urban renewal. Working with urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer and landscape architect Alfred Caldwell, Mies’s Lafayette Park redevelopment project in Detroit proposed a mix of three different building types: high-rise towers, duplex townhouses, and single-story courtyard houses. The diversity of living space and sensitive site plan have been touted as the key to the project’s long-term stability. Many of the qualities of the Lafayette Park townhouse, including the dimensions of the row of houses and the distinctive detailing of the window walls, appear in two design sketches for a glass house dating from the late 1940s.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1949
Medium: Black ink on Four Star Onion Skin paper
Dimensions: 21.8 × 28 cm (8 5/8 × 11 1/16 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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