The Tugendhat House in Brno, the Czech Republic, was planned and built by Mies van der Rohe from 1928 to 1930, and is universally regarded not only as one of his masterpieces, but also as one of the most important buildings of European Modern architecture. This monograph on the Tugendhat House presents previously unpublished photographs belonging to the Tugendhat family, showing the house as it was when it was first inhabited. A representative collection of plans and drawings from Mies van der Rohe's atelier are also presented here for the first time. Carefully reproduced photographs of the original furniture in the family's possession, many of which have never been shown, are also included. Essays by Wolf Tegethoff, Franz Schulze, and Ivo Hammer give a detailed analysis of the significance of the Tugendhat House in the context of Mies's oeuvre.

"In 1945, Edith Farnsworth asked the German architect Mies van der Rohe, already renowned for his avant-garde buildings, to design a weekend home for her outside of Chicago. Edith was a woman ahead of her time--unmarried, she was a distinguished medical researcher, whose discoveries put her in contention for the Nobel Prize, as well as an accomplished violinist, translator, and poet. The two quickly began an intimate relationship, spending weekends together, sharing interests in transcendental philosophy, Catholic mysticism, wine-soaked picnics, and architecture. Their collaboration would produce one of the most important works of architecture of all time, a blindingly original house made up almost entirely of glass and steel. But the minimalist marvel, built in 1951, was plagued by cost over-runs and a sudden chilling of the two friends' mutual affection. Though the building became world-famous, Farnsworth found it impossible to live in the transparent house, and she began a public campaign against him, cheered on by Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies, in turn, sued her for unpaid monies. The ensuing trial covered not just the missing funds and the structural weaknesses of the home, but turned into a trial of modernist art and architecture itself. Interweaving personal drama and cultural history, Alex Beam presents a stylish, enthralling tapestry of a tale, illuminating the fascinating history behind one of the twentieth-century's most beautiful and significant architectural projects"--

Photographer Paul Clemence celebrates a revered icon of modern architecture, the Farnsworth House, located near Plano, Illinois, and designed in 1951 by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Striking architetural details are captured in 20 eye-catching B & W postcards. Whether mailing or framing the stunning images, this book is a must-have for devotees of architecture, design, Modernism, the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, and photography.

Mies at Home is a radical rereading of one of the most significant periods in Mies van der Rohe's career, from the mid- to late 1920s when he was developing his seminal spatial ideas-- ideas that would culminate in his celebrated design of the Tugendhat House. The book examines how Mies's experience of residing in his apartment, doubling as a studio, in central Berlin had an impact on his spatial concepts. It uncovers one of the most profound but virtually untold aspects of Mies's development: how his visions of an ideal lifestyle came out of his own living experience and how they, in turn, informed his domestic architecture. Mies's quest featured two breakthroughs. In the Weissenhof apartment building, he conveyed a flexible and manifold lifestyle that many of the avant-garde artists, including himself, were practicing. Later, in the Tugendhat House, he put forward an alternative way of living that centered on contemplation. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Mies at Home offers a fresh investigation of the diverse intentions and strategies the architect used in creating his iconic open spaces. It will be an insightful read for researchers, academics, and students in architectural history and theory.

The classic and definitive monograph on iconic architect Mies van der Rohe This is the most readable, comprehensive, and beautiful book ever published on one of the twentieth century's most influential architects, now available with a stunning new cover. Known for the beauty and purity of his work, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe built remarkable houses, skyscrapers, museums, and multibuilding campuses. Accompanied by more than 700 drawings, photographs, plans, and diagrams, Mertins' rich and highly readable text traces the aesthetic and intellectual context for all of Mies van der Rohe's work, with in-depth discussions of his most important buildings and projects. The clarity of Mies's architecture belies the diversity of his interests, which included philosophy and science as well as design, and Mertin's rigorous and accessible text gives the reader a clear description of all the most important of Mies's buildings as well as the intellectual contexts for their design. Includes such buildings as: the Barcelona Pavilion in Spain; the Tugendhat House in Brno, Czech Republic; S. R. Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, USA; and the New National Gallery in Berlin, Germany.

This text is an essay on the relationship between ways of thinking, the rich seams of contemporary thought and the forms of the house, of planning and living in it. The descriptive method is based on seven guided visits to a group of real or imaginary houses that make up a sufficiently extended panorama for understanding what the 20th century has bequeathed to us in the way of a heritage. In order to choose the houses to visit it was necessary to narrow things down, simplify them, by highlighting a series of archetypes defined by their most pronounced features. The reader, then, won't find any of the masterworks built by modern architects -neither the Villa Savoye, nor Fallingwater, nor the Villa Tugendhat-but mostly imaginary houses, houses constructed by manipulating different references. In short, this book invites the reader on a fantasy tour, one whose aim is not just to celebrate the diversity of the 20th-century house but also to stimulate the pleasure of thinking, planning and living intensely, to promote the appearance of a house that does not yet exist.

The first survey of the classic twentieth-century houses that defined American Midwestern modernism. Famed as the birthplace of that icon of twentieth-century architecture, the skyscraper, Chicago also cultivated a more humble but no less consequential form of modernism--the private residence. Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929-75 explores the substantial yet overlooked role that Chicago and its suburbs played in the development of the modern single-family house in the twentieth century. In a city often associated with the outsize reputations of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the examples discussed in this generously illustrated book expand and enrich the story of the region's built environment. Authors Susan Benjamin and Michelangelo Sabatino survey dozens of influential houses by architects whose contributions are ripe for reappraisal, such as Paul Schweikher, Harry Weese, Keck & Keck, and William Pereira. From the bold, early example of the "Battledeck House" by Henry Dubin (1930) to John Vinci and Lawrence Kenny's gem the Freeark House (1975), the generation-spanning residences discussed here reveal how these architects contended with climate and natural setting while negotiating the dominant influences of Wright and Mies. They also reveal how residential clients--typically middle-class professionals, progressive in their thinking--helped to trailblaze modern architecture in America. Though reflecting different approaches to site, space, structure, and materials, the examples in Modern in the Middle reveal an abundance of astonishing houses that have never been collected into one study--until now.

Lafayette Park, an affordable middle-class residential area in downtown Detroit, is home to the largest collection of buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the world. Today, it is one of Detroit's most racially integrated and economically stable neighborhoods, although it is surrounded by evidence of a city in financial distress. Through interviews with and essays by residents; reproductions of archival material; and new photographs by Karin Jobst, Vasco Roma, and Corine Vermeulen, and previously unpublished photographs by documentary filmmaker Janine Debanné, Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies examines the way that Lafayette Park residents confront and interact with this unique modernist environment. Lafayette Park has not received the level of international attention that other similar projects by Mies have. This may be due in part to its location in Detroit, a city whose most positive qualities are often overlooked in the media. This book is a reaction against the way that iconic modernist architecture is often represented. Whereas other writers may focus on the design intentions of the architect, authors Aubert, Cavar and Chandani seek to show the organic and idiosyncratic ways that the people who live in Lafayette Park actually use the architecture and how this experience, in turn, affects their everyday lives. While there are many publications about abandoned buildings in Detroit and about the city's prosperous past, this book is about a remarkable part of the city as it exists today, in the twenty-first century.

Investigates how women patrons of architecture were essential catalysts for innovation in domestic architectural design. This book explores the challenges that unconventional attitudes and ways of life presented to architectural thinking, and to the architects themselves.