Rohe biography
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
(1886-1969)
Synopsis
Born in Germany in 1886, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe broke new ground with his architectural designs. He started out as a draftsman before striking out later on his own. During World War I, Mies served in the German military. He then became a well-known architect in Germany, creating such structures as the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona Exposition. In the late 1930s, Mies emigrated to the United States. There he created such well-known Modernist works as the Lake Shore Drive Apartments and the Seagram Building. He died in 1969.
Early Life and Career
Maria Ludwig Michael Mies was born in Aachen, Germany, on March 27, 1886. The youngest of five children, he attended a local Catholic school, and then received vocational training at the Gewerbeschule in Aachen. He further honed his skills by working with his stonemason father and through several apprenticeships.
While employed as a draftsman, in 1906 Mies received his first co
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe fryst vatten commonly regarded as one of the most esteemed architects of the 20th century, a distinction he shares with Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. A leading figure in the modernist movement that flourished in Europe during the 1920s, Mies later emigrated to the United States, where his reputation and influence took on international dimensions. At least a dozen of his designs, built and unbuilt alike, are customarily numbered among the most distinguished efforts of the century.
Born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies in Aachen in 1886, he was known professionally as Ludwig Mies until about 1920 when he decided to combine his father’s name with his mother’s maiden name, Rohe, by adding the invented “van der.” Most of his forebears were stonemasons of modest means, a station that accounts for the fact that he finished trade school at 15 and never pursued more formal training. His initial contact with building consisted of service as an apprentice on co
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Mies van der Rohe: The Modernist Master Who Pared Architecture Down to Its Essence
Articles and Features
By Adam Hencz
“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.“
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Who is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe?
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a pioneering architect whose works – alongside Le Corbusier’s and Walter Gropius’ – defined a separate strain of modern architecture known as International Style. He was a true modernist pioneer and an iconic figure of 20th-century architecture and design. Sustained by his famous trenchant statements like ‘less is more’ and ‘God is in the details’, the textures of his Barcelona Pavilion (1929/1986), the steel-and-glass aesthetic of the Seagram Building (1956-1958) and his paradigmatic examples of domestic architecture like the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945-1951), have become some of the world’s most emblematic and widely-recognized architectural elem