Ludwig Mies van der Rohe can be described as a purist and perfectionist who strove for order and clarity in his design.
Mies worked 1905-1907 as an interior architect in Berlin and was from 1908 member at the studio of Peter Behrens ein, where he met Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier.
1925 director of the "Deutsche Werkbund".
"Less is More" was his motto in reducing his designs to the essence of form and function. "God is in the details" expressed his philosophy and passion for perfection.
He designed elegantly simple buildings of glass and steel, and the furniture he designed for some of these buildings embodies the same modernist characteristics as his architecture. They are refined expressions of luxury in chromium plated steel, leather and glass.
Although they appear similar in style to some of Marcel Breuer's furniture, they disregarded Breuer's concern for low-cost, rationalized production. Mies designed the "Weissenhoff" housing project in Stuttgart, Germany in 1927, the "Barcelona" chair for his German pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition in 1929, and the "Tugendhat" and "Brno" chairs for his "Tugendhat" house in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1930. He often collaborated with interior designer Lilly Reich on the upholstery of his furniture. Mies was the director of the Bauhaus school from 1933 until it was closed by the Nazi's in 1938, and became director of the Architecture, Planning and Design program at Illinois Institute of Technology until 1958.
Foto: Karolinsky-Archive