The Story Of The Life Of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: A Designer, Architect And Modernist Founder

Born Maria Ludwig Mies on March 27, 1886, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is a German-American architect and designer who founded the Contemporary style movement in the early 20th century. He is acknowledge for his “style “skin and bones” architecture and furniture creations as well as for his maxims “Less is more” and God is in the aspects”.

An inhabitant of the remarkable West German city of Aachen, Mies van der Rohe used up his early years working in his father’s stone-carving shop and in quite a few local design firms. In 1908, van der Rohe transferred to Berlin and became a trainee to the well-known architect Peter Behrens. It was during his residence at Behrens that Mies van der Rohe was revealed to the creations theories of the time and became familiar with associates Modern movement pioneers Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (better recognized under the pseudonym) Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. After his apprenticeship was finished, van der Rohe worked temporarily as a construction manager at the German Embassy in Saint Petersburg, Russia before doing his own professional career and embracing his now well-known surname.

Mies van der Rohe initiated with creating upper-class homes in the customary Germanic way, but then rejected traditional design altogether in help of the current fashion. His creaton as an novel architect achieved cultural genuineness|standing} after World War I, where German Empire’s conquered was extensively approved as the ineffectiveness of the old imperial traditions of Europe. In addition, Mies van der Rohe often complemented his architectural projects with his own furniture creations so as to conclude the modernist ambiance of his construction. Quite a lot of examples of this contain the steel-and-leather Barcelona Chair for the German Pavilion in Barcelona, Spain and the Brno and Tugendhat Chairs for the Villa Tugendhat in Czechoslovakia (now named the Czech Republic).

Mies van der Rohe also turned to be the director of the Dessau (and later in Berlin) branch of the Bahaus school by Walter Gropius in the 1930s, but he was later obligate by the Nazi regime to shut down the school in 1933. Van der Rohe immigrated to the United States soon after and maintained his career as an architect and designer until his death August 17, 1969. His ruins are hidden at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.