MIES VAN DER ROHE
THE VILLAS AND COUNTRY HOUSES
Wolf Tegethoff
Wolf Tegethoff: MIES VAN DER ROHE: THE VILLAS AND COUNTRY HOUSES. New York and Cambridge, MA: The Museum of Modern Art and The MIT Press, 1985. First English language edition. Quarto. Cream cloth titled in black. Printed dust jacket. 223 pp. 227 black and white and color images. 66 text illustrations. Illustrated case histories of 21 built and unrealized residences designed between 1923 and 1951. Glossy white jacket lightly sunned to edges, thus a fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
8.5 x 12 hardcover book with 223 pages and 227 black and white and color images, as well as 66 text illustrations. Originally published in Germany in 1981 by the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum der Stadt Krefeld.
Features illustrated case studies of the following structures:
- Concrete Country House, 1923
- Lessing House, 1923
- Brick Country House, 1924
- Dexel House, 1925
- Eliat House, 1925
- Wold House, 1925–27
- Esters House, 1927–30
- Lange House, 1927–30
- Glass Room, 1927
- Barcelona Pavilion, 1928–29
- Tugendhat House, 1928–30
- Nolde House, 1929
- Krefeld Gold Club, 1930
- House At The Berlin Building Exposition, 1931
- Gericke House, 1932
- Mountain House, 1934
- Hubbe House, 1935
- Ulrich Lange House, 1935
- Court Houses, 1931–40
- Resor House, 1937–40
- Farnsworth House, 1945–51
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe [1886 – 1969] began his career in architecture in Berlin, working as an architect first in the studio of Bruno Paul and then, like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, for Peter Behrens. In 1927, a housing project called Weissenhof Siedlung in Stuttgart, Germany, would bring these names together again. Widely believed to be one of the most notable projects in the history of modern architecture, it includes buildings by Gropius, Corbu, Behrens, Mies and others.
In 1928, Mies and his companion and colleague, the designer and Bauhaus alumna Lilly Reich, were asked to design the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona. The purpose of the Pavilion was to provide a location that could be visited by the king and queen of Spain during the opening of the Exposition. With that in mind, Mies designed a modern throne – known today as the Barcelona® Chair – for their majesties. In the following year, Mies designed another notable chair, the Brno, with a gravity-defying cantilevered base.
In 1930, Mies succeeded Walter Gropius as the director of the Bauhaus, where he stayed until the school closed in 1933. In 1937, Mies emigrated from Europe to the United States, and a year later became the director of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The rest of his career was devoted to promoting the modernist style of architecture in the U.S., resulting in rigorously modern buildings such as the Farnsworth House and the Seagram Building, designed with Philip Johnson.
The modern city, with its towers of glass and steel, can be at least in part attributed to the influence of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Equally significant, if smaller in scale, is Mies’ daring design of furniture, pieces that exhibit an unerring sense of proportion, as well as minimalist forms and exquisitely refined details. In fact, his chairs have been called architecture in miniature – exercises in structure and materials that achieve an extraordinary visual harmony as autonomous pieces and in relation to the interiors for which they were designed.