Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

1886 – 1969

Mies Van Der Rohe has given an extraordinary contribution to the evolution of furniture design of the XX century furniture. His cantilevered tubular seating represent the celebration of the performing virtues of steel.

After beginning his career as an apprentice in the studio of Peter Behrens, where he was exposed to new trends of progressist culture, he began working on independent projects. Mies Van Der Rohe belongs to the so-called first generation of modernist architects. Some of his US projects – starting from Illinois Institute of Technology, through Fansworth House to the Seagram’s building, have made him one of the masters of the twentieth century. “God is in the details.” His famous aphorism offers an interesting insight into his vision of technology, seen as a control tool for the architectural outcome, designed to replenish a simple and balanced structural order. Mies gave an significant contribution to the evolution of furniture design, by making some outstanding projects himself, with the complicit help of Lilly Reich. His cantilevered tubular seating represent the celebration of the performing virtues of steel, and introduce the formal freedom that his generation had programmatically denied to themselves in the design of architecture.

Suggested readings
Ludwig Glaeser, “Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Furniture and Furniture Drawings”, The Museum of Modern Art, 1977