Critical Evaluation

When it comes to the question of the big names of the design of 20^th century, they do not come much bigger or longer than that of the name of Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe. This paper is going to elaborate on this German-born designer and architect- Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe (1886-1969), who is widely recognised as the pioneering masters of the Modern architecture who is responsible for the establishment and popularity of the modern architectural style in United States. He is one of the greatest advocates of Bauhaus school as well as the new trends of artistry which arisen in this school. He is the one who has defined the modern styles of architecture in the United States by laying emphasis upon the open space and by revealing the materials that were used for the reinvention of the new forms of buildings. For near about a long century, the minimalist style of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has proved to be very popular and his designs have carried the true ideas of minimalism and rationalism to a whole new level This paper shall elaborate on conveying the beauty of the designs and architectures that are made by him, taking in consideration the spaces and the sunlight which made his works recognised all around the globe. With the same, this paper shall also focus on conveying the light changes which occurred in course of time.

Ludwig Mies and the period of Modernism

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born as Maria Ludwig Michael Mies on 27^th of March, 1886 in Aachen. As per Stach (2018), Ludwig Mies van der rohe is one of the most significant designers of the 20th century. He has worked as the last director of the Bauhaus school in Berlin. He is widely known for the role that he has played and the contribution he has made in the growth of the most enduring styles of the period of modernism. For near about a long century, the minimalist style of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has proved to be very popular and one of his famous aphorisms named- “less is more” is still very popularly used and that too, even by the ones who are completely unaware of its origins. According to Watson (2016), Mies began to develop this style throughout the 1920s by combining an aesthetic drive and the functionalist industrial concerns of his own modernist contemporaries towards the minimal intersecting planes. It bookended the very decade by his proposal for Friedrichstraße skyscraper. It is to note that Friedrichstraße skyscraper is a lurking all-glass tower, which was designed in the year 1921 and that cemented his fame within the architectural avant-garde. He has made several building namely the Seagram Building, Barcelona Pavilion, the Crown Hall, the New National Gallery, the Farnsworth House, Tugendhat House, the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive and the Toronto-Dominion Centre. As per Lee (2016), Mies, along with Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius is popularly regarded as the revolutionary masters of the Modern Architecture. He, like many of the contemporaries of post-World War 1 had sought to develop new style of architecture which has the potential to represent the modern times like how the Gothic and the Classical did in their respective eras. With the same, he has also created a 20^th century architectural style, which is stated with utter simplicity and clarity. The mature buildings and works of his has made the use of modern materials like the industrial plate glass and steel for defining the interior spaces. Mies strived for an architecture with the minimal framework of the structural order that is balanced in contrast to the indirect freedom of the free-flowing open space. As per Mies, his buildings were “skin and bones” architecture. With the same, it is also to mention that he sought a very rational approach which would help in guiding a very creative process of the architectural design. Also, Mies was often linked with the maxim “God is in the details” and “less is more” (Kubiak 2016). He started his career in architecture with the role of an apprentice in the studio maintained by Peter Behrens from the year 1908 to 1912. In this place, he had exposure to the present theories of design and the progressive culture of Germany while working with Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. The ascending criticism within the historical styles achieved substantial credibility of culture right after the end of World War I, which was a disaster that is highly considered to be as a collapse of the earlier world order of the European monarchical leadership. It is to mention that the styles of aristocratic classical revival were in particular, detested by several people as a symbol of architecture in the presently discredited and the outmoded system of the society. Furthermore, when continuing with his traditional neoclassical design practise, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe started to develop some projects that were visionary in nature and they were mostly unbuilt and they rocketed him to the fame as the architect who has the potential of the giving form, in consonance with the spirit of the appearing modern society. Mies has made a substantial debut in modernism along with his remarkable competition proposal designed for the faceted all-glass Friedrichstraße skyscraper in 1921 which was followed by a taller and curved version in the year 1922, named as the Glass Skyscraper. Mies had used his own personal recombination of the ideas as the basis of his architectural principles and theories. This was developed by the other designers and thinkers who had reviewed the faults of traditional styles of design. His modernist thinking had been influenced by most of the art movements and design of the then society. He had depicted selective adoption of the theoretical ideas like the aesthetic credos of the Russian Constructivism along with the doctrine of the “efficient” constructions of sculptures by making use of the modern-age industrial materials. He had found the usage of planar and simple rectilinear forms, pure use of colours and clean lines along with the extension of the space surrounding the interior walls that are expounded by the group of Dutch De Stujl appealing.

Ludwig Mies and the period of Modernism

As described by Mertins et al. (2014), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe pursued the ambitious mission for creating a new language of architecture which could be utilised for representing the new period of production and technology lifelong. He is the one to see a need for architectural expressive in consonance with his period like the Gothic architecture which was for the period of spiritualism. With the same, he had also applied some design processes by making use of rational thoughts for achieving his spiritual goals. Furthermore, Mies had also believed the notion that arrangement and configuration of different architectural elements need to contribute to a unified expression. He painstakingly studied and assessed great philosophers, both from the past and the present for enhancing his knowledge of the indispensable qualities of technological times and that of the characters in which and with whom he lived in. As stated by Goad (2016), he mined the works or writings of the philosophers for generating ideas which were relevant for his architectural mission. His steel-and-glass aesthetic had become archetype of “modern architecture” for several decades and even posthumously. His architecture was formed on the basis of a higher level of the abstraction and also, on his own generalised descriptions of the principles that left enough space for the interpretation. Luscombe (2016) in this context have stated that the depth of the meaning that is conveyed through his works are beyond the aesthetic qualities and they have drawn several theoretical thinkers and contemporary philosophers for continuing to further explore and speculate regarding his architectures.

Mies shifted and settled in Chicago and there was appointed as the head of one of the architecture schools at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago (Colombo 2017). All the buildings of his were still standing there and his masterpiece- named, the S.R. Crown Hall was built as the homes of the School of Architecture there. Also, the Crown Hall is considered to be the finest work of Ludwing Mies van der Rohe. It is standing on the of Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus of Chicago and is one of his modern masterpiece. It is to note that as per the National Historic Landmark, the Crown Hall is decribed as “A straight forward expression of construction and materiality, which allows the structure to transcend into art”. It is a very large room that is 120 x 220 ft. in plan and is 18 ft. high without any sort of interior columns present. It is being used as an architectural school. It is to note that the most interesting thing in this is the structural solution of the structural beams that are exposed over the roof and this makes the method of attaining a clear-span interior. He ended his link with this school in the year 1958 (Ostwald and Dawes 2018). The next renowned work of his is of the Farnsworth House, which was created within the span of 1946 to 1951. It is one among of his most radically minimalist houses that were designed. It consists of a single room and is subdivided by the present partitions and are enclosed within glasses. According to Colman (2016), “The muteness speaks to us through the gentle and contingent setting of the house on its site”. It is held together with a total of eight columns of steel. From afar, it seems to be an iconic box made of glass but it is in fact a space by means of which life unfolds interdependently and independently with Mother Nature. Furthermore, his first attempt at constructing tall office building is of the Seagram Building, which is situated on the Park Avenue (Yilmaz 2017). It creates a very remarkable monument to the Overseas Styles faith in lucidity and simplicity. It is a 38 story building that very quickly became the most copied and the most influential office building of the country. As per Winton (2018), it is an “instant classic”. It is also to state that the external faces of Seagram Building were given their character through means of quality of the materials that were used. This is the very first skyscraper that is bronzed coloured.

Ludwig Mies and Spiritualism

Furthermore, the next work of his the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive apartments that is present in Chicago. It is also one of his high raised building and in this as well, he used the very same style of the modern architecture that he has used in his other projects in United States (Stach 2018). It is a 26 storied tower that borders the Lake Michigan. This gives it a wonderful waterfront view. These buildings are very renowned world-wide for their composition and structural clarity on the site. Two of the most significant aspects of these buildings are that of the expression of skin and the bone of the glass and steel towers. As per Elsaesser (2018), it is very obvious that Ludwig Mies relied on clarity of the forms that he used to achieve by means of elegant proportions. One of the other striking projects made by Mies is that of the Federal Centre. Here again he had made use of steel designs and minimalist glasses that are very eye catchy and striking (Baer and Duis 2014). Furthermore, the Minerals and Metals building is the very first construction of Ludwig Mies on the campus of IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology)

. It marked his first and the foremost step towards realising the master plan of Mies for the very campus that was one of his finest and the most significant works in United States (Feng, Han and Xiang 2017). As stated by Vadala (2018), this project was “not something made by the God of Crown hall”. Instead, it was something that is a part of development and establishment of his very own language of architecture. In this building, Mies had utilised the rolled-steel-1 beam as a major portion of his overall structural grammar. His irregular usage of steel was a map to have a view of the insight of the very building of Mineral and Metal and also, it inaugurated a process that he made use of again in his other projects and architectures in America.

His modern edifices are basically distinguished by pairing both of the overall shape and the details of the individuals as well and to some extent, by making use of high grade materials in their making. The same is applied to his furniture that he designed for adorning his buildings and architectures. Some of the most significant examples of them include the Haus Tugendhat and the Barcelona Pavilion. Mies is considered to be the most intellectual architects and he spent most of his life time in pursuing rational approach to the design and as per Colombo, (2017), his goal was always to be a system which other could make use of for creating buildings as beautiful and as powerful as the ones that Mies designed himself. Two of his most famous furniture designs is the Brno chair, the Weissenhof chair, the Tugendhat chair and the Barcelona chair (Schuldenfrei 2018). All these have long since become classics and they are still in massive production. They reflect the very same philosophical underpinnings which drove his architecture and both of them is concerned with the utility of space and their forms. The Barcelona chair is a pared-down version of heavy duty leather armchair. It is to note that the overarching ambition of Mies was always to develop a designing style which would be representative of the modern times, much as the Gothic and the Classical ensured for their period. In several ways he has indeed achieved his ambition. However, he had transcended it in creating the designs, which appear to be more timeless instead of timely. The names of his notable design partners include Sergius Ruegenberg and Lilly Reich. Most of his designs of furniture have qualities that are simply iconic and they go far beyond their key purpose of usage.

Ludwig Mies and his designs and design style

Williams (2018) in this context has stated that the buildings designed by Mies often seems to be emphasizing on their very own singularity relatives to their surroundings. Hence, putting themselves on view because of their transparency and inhabitants. It makes most of them like the Barcelona Pavilion, the ideals for the public based functions and at the same time, it also makes few of them like the Farnsworth House, the most strenuous to occupy at the time when privacy is very much required. Also, Ashar and Embi (2015) have stated that as Mies has grown up surrounding the stonecutting shop of his father, he was very knowledgeable and sensitive to the choices of the things or materials that he used in his designs and architecture. They comprise of the type of stones, the quality of bronze, chrome and also the bricks as well. Most of his buildings such as the Seagram Building and the Tugendhat House are very expensive structure for building and they are also noted equally for the very fine craftsmanship. It is also to mention that the architecture of Mies is rarely seen as promoting the dissolution in between the exterior and the interior as well as the negation of the feelings that are entirely enclosed in between (Zimmerman 2014). Instead of this, they promote increased flexibility in the dimensional configurations for Ludwig Mies revealing that they increased the spatial usage. Also, Mies is an extremely devoted and sincere designer unlike his partners like Le Corbusier and other champions of the international style, who fled. Mies remained entirely committed and demonstrated a devotion towards the movement almost over the past four decades of the entire career. In fact, his buildings gradually became major targets for the postmodernists who are known to charge the international style.

Conclusion

Hence, from the above analysis it is to state that the paper has provided a brief analysis of the designer Ludwig Mies van ran Rohe. It was aimed at presenting a clear understanding of his design style, his works, background as well as his contribution the development of designs. He has undoubtedly created the most influential architectural styles of 20^th century in the United States that are rich in both clarity and simplicity.

The study has explored on the link of Ludwig Mies with modernism. He has played and the contribution he has made in the growth of the most enduring styles of the period of modernism. He has made substantial modernist debut along with his remarkable competition proposal dedicated to the faceted all-glass Friedrichstraße skyscraper.

Secondly, it has explored the relation between him and spiritualism. Ludwig has seen a need for architectural expressive in consonance with his period like the Gothic architecture which was implemented for the period of spiritualism. He had also applied some design processes by making use of rational thoughts for achieving those spiritual goals of his.

Thirdly, the paper has briefly explored the various designs and the design styles of Ludwig and this is evident in the Crown Hall, the Seagram building, the Minerals and Metals, Federal Centre and the Farnsworth house. His use of the modern materials like the steel and the glass could also be visible in these buildings. Furthermore, it is also to conclude that his works in the United States visibly radiate the rationality, the confidence and the elegance of their designer or the creator- Ludwig Mies van ran Rohe, which is simply free from all types of access ornamentation. Also, not only in just buildings and architectures, his creativity is also visible from the furniture that were designed by him. The significant ones are the Brno chair, the Barcelona chair, the Weissenhof chair and the Tugendhat chair. With the same, it is also to state that Mies used to follow his design principle of “less is more” very strongly and this approach of his is relevant as ever in all his projects and designs. Along with Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd and Le Corbusier Wright, Mies is widely considered as one of the revolutionary masters of the modern architecture. The steel-and-glass aesthetic had become the model of “modern architecture” for several decades and even posthumously. 

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