(Architecture - Ebook) .Mies - Van.der - Rohe. .Farnsworth - House
(Architecture - Ebook) .Mies - Van.der - Rohe. .Farnsworth - House
(Architecture - Ebook) .Mies - Van.der - Rohe. .Farnsworth - House
Mies van der Rohe decided to site the house next to the great
never intended for anything else. The size of its single room,
space, and indeed it would be odd if this were not so, for
never-ending love affair - and felt - when the leaves of the tree
the dense foliage of the sugar maple shields the house from the
torrid heat and ensures its privacy from the river.
imagined that steel and glass could not possess this quality unlike brick, for example, which is a softer, more porous
material that seems to absorb as well as emanate a particular
interact with, each other. While this may deviate from the
ordered logic and clarity of the whole, from the way in which
the house has been lovingly crafted, and from the sensitive
juxtaposition of fine materials. Anxiety, stress or sheer fatigue
and purple. At such times, one can see forever and with
like the lotus flower that floats in the water and never gets wet.
In November, a harvest moon rises slowly behind the tree-line,
as if giving a seal of approval to the day that has just gone by.
Later on, in January, when the winter snows have begun to fall
Shortly after sunrise the early morning light, filtering through the
branches of the linden tree, first dapples and then etches the
At first sight Mies's first and last built houses, the Riehl House of
such as why the house was built, how it was built, and how it
has performed.
because they did not belong to any epoch. They had been there
basis, as Mies saw it, of 'a spiritual attitude [that] had nothing to
for over a thousand years and were still impressive, and nothing
could change that. All the great styles passed, but they were
said: 'You see with how few means you can make architecture-
with 'honesty' that led him to theorize that building form should
14
honesty of Berlage.
onyx and translucent glass. The final step, via a series of unbuilt
18
outlined above are the central story of Mies's second and third
Farnsworth House.
The spatial opening-up of the house described above was
living in airy, sunny rooms (in contrast with the stuffy, dusty and
}1
and other, and led naturally to the clinically white, glassy and
sparsely furnished buildings of Mies and his contemporaries.
And there was, secondly, a spiritual aspect. Throughout his
life the apparently technology-driven Mies van der Rohe was
actually an earnest searcher after the deeper meanings behind
everyday existence.27 Some time between 1924 and 1927
he moved to the view that 'building art is always the spatial
expression of spiritual decisions' and began to gravitate away
from the rather mechanistic functionalists of the Neue
Sachlichkeit ('new objectivity') movement.28 He had for many
years been pondering the writings of Catholic philosophers
such as St Thomas Aquinas, and now discovered a new book
by Siegfried Ebeling titled DerRaum als Membran. This was
a mystical tract which treated the building as an enclosing
membrane forming a space for concentration and mystic
celebration.29 It is clear from the underlinings in Mies's personal
copy that he took Ebeling's arguments seriously.
Though this period of spirituality seems to have faded somewhat after his Barcelona Pavilion, and he gradually returned to
drier and more objective design attitudes as noted above, the
dignified serenity of pavilions such as the Farnsworth House
and the New National Gallery in Berlin (1962-8) bear witness to
Mies's abiding preoccupation with the creation of orderly, noble
and indeed quasi-spiritual spaces in our turbulent world.
The outcome at Fox River of all the themes traced above aesthetic, social and spiritual - is a tranquil weekend house
of unsurpassed clarity, simplicity and elegance. Every physical
element has been distilled to its irreducible essence. The
for themselves) dominated the mostly white, glassy, flatsurfaced, sparsely-furnished buildings selected for publication
along which ran a minor public road giving access to the site.
and the western boundary by Fox River Drive, the main road to
International Style of the late 1920s and early 1930s had been
'trying to be'.
In late 1945 Mies van der Rohe, then aged 59 and still relatively
in 1951.
sation that she owned a riverside site on the Fox River, about 60
miles west of Chicago, and was thinking of building there a
weekend retreat. She wondered aloud whether his office might
The lawsuit
By then, unfortunately, the initially sympathetic relationship
knew them agrees that this was at least partly due to a failed
precision of the design but the April 1953 issue of the more
the start of the project they worked closely together, had picnics
who had let her down, rather than a comment on the house?
by both the man and the emerging design. Recalling the evening
exemplar, and the Bauhaus which was the seedbed of this kind
she first discussed the house with Mies she later said that 'the
'Dear Mies
Frank Lloyd Wright, who in the 1930s and early 1940s had
screens so that one entered the glass pavilion via a wire mesh
Such work one can only recognize and cherish - with love and
recognize that also and see that it is dealt with in some decent
fashion.
Faithfully yours
glass pavilion. She complained that 'Mies talks about his "free
Postscript on p.24.
Edith'
space", but the space is very fixed. I can't even put a clothes
everything from the outside'; and that 'I thought you could
painful for both sides, Mies van der Rohe and Edith Farnsworth
Japanese tea house in which she and her friend and mentor
Planning
The first of these was a grand residence for Fritz and Grete
Tugendhat, which Mies was actually in the process of designing
grey silk curtain before the main glass wall; the library could be
ran between the onyx wall and the winter garden. This neutral
flowed freely through the interiors and out into the courtyards.
Each walled enclosure was effectively one large 'room', part of
which was indoors and part outdoors - an intermediate stage to
the Farnsworth House where the entire surrounding meadow
Tugendhat said later: 'From the first moment it was certain that
and the lush green jungle of plants filling the winter garden.
he was our man ... We knew we were in the same room with an
artist.' That was a common reaction among Mies's clients.52
This vision had its negative side, and along with the plaudits
the solid 'block' houses Mies had been building only two years
earlier (the Esters and Lange houses of 1927-30), and towards
living area, and had no internal divisions except for furniture and
impassioned 'yes'.53
a fireplace.
16
In the past, the interior spaces (the wings of the house) and
court houses were planned, the entire site in each case being
were inherited by Mies from an earlier design for that site - are
south. The long northern side of the core consists of a single run
side incorporates a low, open hearth facing the living area. The
for instance, on figure 27, the two glass screens separating the
kitchen space from the rest of the house - Mies's last halfhearted attempt at traditional boxed-in rooms before going for
face east so that the sleeper wakes to the glory of the morning
sun), a dining area to the west, and a general sitting area
ultimate conclusion.
His most fundamental decision involved the relationship
and the house was built without them. (In fact practicality would
for the raised floor is that the meadow is a floodplain, but Mies
car garage beside the gate on the northern boundary of the site,
where she presumably parked her car and walked across the
field to the house. Her visitors more commonly drove all the way
to the house and parked there. The disturbing presence of
garage, track and automobiles inevitably diminished the dream-
visitors) and a utility room, and is set closer to the northern wall
kitchen space to the north and a much larger living area to the
The structure
frame lent itself to clear structural display, and was 'honest' and
upon these to form the roof and floor slabs respectively. The
greater than that imposed on B by the roof, but for the sake of
making it clear that the roof plane does not rest on the columns
by magnetism.
and straightforward.
services.
that 'form is not an end in itself',66 and that the use of materials
Steelwork
bolts and cleats, apply permanent welding, and then burn off
the holding bolts and plug the holes. The steel surfaces would
then be ground smooth to give the appearance of being formed
of a single continuous material without breaks or joints. Finally,
to ensure a smooth and elegant appearance he had the steel
sections grit-blasted to a smooth matt surface, and the entire
assembly primed and given three coats of paint.
The effect of this sequence of operations in the Farnsworth
House was, as Franz Schulze has commented, almost to deindustrialize the steel frame, taming the mighty product of blast
furnace, rolling mill and electric arc into a silky-surfaced,
seemingly jointless white substance of Platonic perfection.
Other materials
Passing on from the steel-and-glass envelope, the other materials used in the Farnsworth House are rigorously restricted to
travertine (floors), wood (primavera for the core walls, teak for
the wardrobe) and plaster (ceilings).
The range of colours is equally limited, the better to set off
the few artworks and carefully-chosen items of furniture inside,
and the framed views of nature outside - white columns and
ceiling, off-white floors and curtains, and pale brown wood.
Such sobriety was a long-standing Miesian characteristic. In
1958 he told the architect and critic Christian Norberg-Schulz:
'I hope to make my buildings neutral frames in which man and
artworks can carry on their own lives ... Nature, too, shall have
its own life. We must beware not to disrupt it with the colour of
our houses and interior fittings. Yet we should attempt to bring
nature, houses and human beings together into a higher unity.
Steel frame
Roof construction
A Steel stanchion
B Steel channels forming perimeter
frame at roof level
C Steel channels forming perimeter
frame at floor level
D Steel cross-girders at roof level
E Steel cross-girders at floor level
F Intermediate mullion built up from flat
steel bars
G Waterproof membrane on
H Foam glass insulation on
I Precast concrete planks
Floor construction
J Travertine slabs on
K Mortar bed on
L Crushed stone on
M Metal tray on
N Lightweight concrete fill on
precast concrete slabs
whose legs and rails are fluidly shaped, and invisibly jointed, to
Detailing
that form the floors of house and terrace were fitted to the steel
less obtrusive, an observer's eye tending to 'read' the straightedged groove rather than the irregular crack-line meandering
within it. After about 1940 this was Mies's preferred method for
the ceiling from the steel frames that hold the glass walls.
not invented by him (it occurs in the work of both Schinkel and
Internal environment
west and two small hopper windows on the east, and activate
took the last step: there are no longer any skirtings or cornices,
the supply of heat, and give quicker warming, hot air could be
blown into the living area from a small furnace in the utility room.
surface and yet remains dry. This has been achieved by laying
south face of the central core, facing the living area, which it is
trees encircling the house, and the high sun bouncing off the
The worst cold-weather failing was the amount of condensation streaming down the chilled glass panes and collecting
Assessment
the sun's rays; on dull days the diffuse light will still pick out the
facades.73
illuminatedbyuplightingreflectedofftheceiling,augmented by
Rainwater drainage
blanketed for weeks on end, the snow lit by a low sun and the
bare trees affording long views across the frozen Fox river. By
House. Behind its level fascia the roof surface slopes down to a
single drainage pipe directly above the utility room stack. The
steel fascia and its capping stand sufficiently high above the
home meadow.'
The diurnal cycle is as delightful. Of the sleeping area to the
east, a guest who stayed the night wrote that 'the sensation is
and trees and the river beyond; it takes over your whole vision.
You are in nature and not in it, engulfed by it but separate from
loftily disregarded.K
80
Miesian design.
That brings us to the third of the points raised above whether the Farnsworth House might serve as a reproducible
recall times when the river water rose almost to the level of the
looks right, from overall form down to the tiniest detail. The
result stands as an object lesson for all designers, and the core
this cannot possibly be true for dwellings unless they are large
the authorities built a new road that was twice the width of the
house, Karl Freund, later told the writer David Spaeth, 'she
and clearly visible therefrom. The traffic was now faster and
Postscript
once that he must buy. Taking his life in his hands, as he put it,
always bear her name. Her original devotion to the house had
Lord Palumbo's original dream that Mies van der Rohe might
be commissioned to restore to perfection his own twenty-year-
misfortune.
old building was cruelly thwarted when the latter died in 1969.
The commission was therefore given in 1972 to Dirk Lohan,
decided to widen and re-align the road and bridge along the
of summery green.'92
The new stands of trees to the north, east and west now
provide an enclosure for the house and the scenic backdrop
gate nearly 200m (650 ft) to the east of the original, out of sight
from the north to terminate in a new parking area 45m (150 ft)
coat and repainted, and all the glass panels were replaced.
arrive at this riverside parking space they leave their cars, cross
In its original state the house looked out east, north and west
hot air for quick warming-up) were left unchanged, but the
Mies.93
1940s) was newly installed, and the plant concealed above the
service core.
And finally the interior, which Dr Farnsworth had filled with a
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
River Road
Piano Milbrook Road (1951)
Fox River Drive (today)
Trees
Garage built by Dr Farnsworth
Original site boundary
New parking area added by Lord
Palumbo
8 Fox River
Photographs
Core unit
Scale 1:50
North elevation
Key to details
scale 1:200
Plan details
scale 1:5
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
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23
24
25
26
27
28
Section
details
scale 1:5
Detail 10
Detail 12
Detail 11
Detail 13
Section details
scale 1:5
Detail 14
Detail 16
Detail 15
Detail 17
Section details
scale 1:5
1
2
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4
Detail 18
Detail 19
NOTES
5
6
7
8
9
10
steel frames.
11 'In the Altes Museum [Schinkel]
has separated the windows
very clearly, he separated the
elements, the columns and the
walls and the ceiling, and I think
that is still visible in my later
buildings' - Mies talking to
Graeme Shankland on the BBC
Third Programme, 1959 (Carter
p. 182). In fact this kind of clarity
was already visible in Mies's Riehl
House (see Schulze, Mies van
der Rohe, p.28) and Schinkel's
role may have been to confirm
and enhance a sensibility that
was already present in the
young Mies.
12 Mies's view was that architectural
form should result from the
nature of the problem to be
solved, and not from
preconceived style. He
expressed this often, from the
1920s - ' Form is not the goal but
the result of our work' (Neumeyer
pp.242, 243, 247, 257) - until the
1950s when he still insisted that
'architecture has nothing to do
with the invention of forms' and
that 'the invention of forms is
obviously not the task of the
building art' (Neumeyer
pp.324-5). But he was one of the
great form-givers of the age,
imposing upon project after
project his own twentieth-century
distillations of the forms of
classical architecture, often in
defiance of structural logic.
13 Seen.9
14 For early examples of Mies
allowing appearance to
determine structure, rather than
vice versa, see the Esters and
Lange houses (1927-30): their
very long window lintels, invisibly
supported by hidden steel
beams, are exceptionally neat
but contradict the nature of loadbearing brickwork. Mies's
pavilions in the Bacardi Office
Building project (1957) and New
National Gallery (1962-7) are late
examples: as Peter Blundell
Jones has pointed out their
forms are virtually identical
despite the fact that the first was
meant to be made of concrete
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
68
69
70
71
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
75 Seen.29
76 In August 1951 the German
philosopher Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976) presented an
important paper titled Bauen,
Wohnen, Denken ('Building,
Dwelling, Thinking') at a
symposium on Man and Space in
Darmstadt. Heidegger suggests
that modern man no longer
knows the full meaning of the
act of 'dwelling', and sets
out to trace the meaning of
this experience to its deepest
existential roots. As with Ebeling
(n.29), his essay is not an easy
read and remains unavailable in
English; but some idea of his
approach to architecture may be
found in the writings of Christian
Norberg-Schulz - eg Existence,
Space and Architecture (London:
Studio Vista, 1971) and Genius
Loci (London: Academy Editions,
1980). I am indebted to Professor
Dieter Holm for a translation of
the essay and for the suggestion
that the 'act of dwelling' (in
Heidegger's sense of humankind
making itself at home in the
world, and at one with the world)
is possibly more powerfully
satisfied by the conjunction of
man, architecture and nature in
the Farnsworth House than by
almost any other twentiethcentury dwelling.
77 Schulze, The Farnsworth House
78 Ibid.
79 Most traditional building
construction is 'layered', each
layer masking imperfections in
the one beneath. Thus a rough
wall may be covered by a layer of
plaster, which in turn is covered
by a layer of paper and/or paint.
Similarly, rough timber framing
is covered by more accurately
machined joinery, and all joints
are then masked by mouldings.
In addition to being visually
expressive, traditional cornices,
skirtings, jambs, architraves and
beads therefore perform the vital
function of masking rough edges,
cracks and structural movement
in the fabric beneath. Mies's
post-1930 buildings almost
completely avoid such layering.
81 Blake pp.9, 10
82 Seen.73
83 With regard to the 50 ft by 50 ft
House (which could also be
made 40 ft or 60 ft square to suit
the client's needs), Schulze, Mies
van derRohe, p.261 refers to an
undated clipping from the
Chicago Tribune, held in the Mies
van der Rohe Archive at the
Museum of Modern Art in New
York, which quotes Mies as
saying: 'Since there seems to be
a real need for such homes we
have attempted to solve the
problem by developing a steel
skeleton and a core that could be
used for all houses ... The interior
is left open for flexibility.'
84 In an interview on the BBC Third
Programme in 1959 Mies told
Graeme Shankland, 1 would not
like to live in a cubical house
with a lot of small rooms. I would
rather live on a bench in Hyde
Park' (Carterp.181); and the last
sentence in n.83 suggests that
he believed the open plan to be
DIMENSIONS
MATERIALS
(before renovation)
FARNSWORTH HOUSE
CHRONOLOGY
Imperial
Metric
Overall length
77 ft 3 in
23.546m
Internal width
28 ft 8 in
8.738m
Internal height
9 ft 6 in
2.896m
Internal floor area
2,215 sq ft 205.83 sqm
Deck length
55ft
16.764m
Deck width
22ft
6.706m
Deck area
1,210sqft 112.42sqm
Floor level above ground
5ft
+1.5m
Deck level above ground
2ft
0.6m
Stanchion spacing along length
of house
22ft
6.706m
Floor & roof cantilevers beyond
end stanchions
5 ft 7 in
1.702m
Floor module
Length
2 ft 9 in
838 mm
Width
2ft
610mm
Entrance door offset
1 ft
305 mm
Core unit length
24 ft 6 in
7.468m
Core unit width
12ft
3.658m
Core unit height
7 ft 6 in
2.286m
Storage cabinet length
12ft
3.658m
Storage cabinet depth
2 f t 2 in
0.660m
Storage cabinet height
6ft
1.829m
Kitchen area width
4f
1.20m
Sitting area width
12ft
3.70m
Dining area width
17ft
5.20m
Sleeping area width
12ft
3.70m
Steelwork
Fascia height
15 in
381 mm
Stanchion size
8 in square 203 mm square
1945
1971
1945
1972
1946
1977
Dr Farnsworth dies at the age of
74 in Italy, where she has lived for
some years
3 March 1886
Born in Aachen, Germany
1937-8
Emigrates to the USA
1904
1938-59
Moves to Berlin
1905-7
Holds series of positions in private
architectural practice in Berlin
1908-11
Works in Berlin studio of Peter
Behrens
1996
1949
Dr Farnsworth receives an
inheritance which enables
construction to begin
1951
1997
1951
1946-51
1911-14
In private architectural practice
in Berlin
1914-18
Military service
1919-37
In private architectural practice
in Berlin
1997
1921
Co-founder of G (Gestaltung
magazine) in Berlin
1953
1921-5
Director of Architectural Exhibits,
November Group, Berlin
1925
1927
Director of the Weissenhofsiedlung,
Stuttgart
1967
Kendall County compulsorily
purchases part of Dr Farnsworth's
property, widens and raises the road
along the western boundary of the
site, and moves the road closer to
the house
1930-2
Director of the Bauhaus at Dessau
1931
1968
Dr Farnsworth advertises the house
for sale
1938-69
In private architectural practice
in Chicago
1932-3
Director of the Bauhaus in Berlin
1968
1933