Less is More: The styling of Mies van der Rohe That Still Influences Architects Today

His face might not be immediately identifiable, but the architectural designs and influence of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe can be seen around the world. His designs decorate everyday life and made his International Style of Modernism a global phenomenon that has been adopted on every inhabited continent and made him one of the most influential architects of the 20th century.

“Less is more”

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

As one of the leading lights of modernist architecture, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe propelled architecture of the early 1920s into the modern age with the International Style. This became the core movement of modern architecture and influenced generations of architects worldwide, while also forever altering city skylines around the world.

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Creating a huge body of work that ranged from iconic tubular steel furniture to minimalist residential architecture and office buildings that set the template for modern city skylines, van der Rohe’s designs have enjoyed a lasting legacy. Infusing his ‘less is more’ mantra throughout his designs in spaces like the Villa Tugendhat in Czechia to large, elaborate office towers like New York’s Seagram Building, his buildings embodied a minimalist perfection. This doesn’t mean that they were sparse, as his fluid spaces showcased his passion for rich materials and surfaces that exaggerated the depth of his designs.

Along with fellow Modernist pioneers, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, van der Rohe championed the International Style that he would become synonymous with worldwide. Even in the face of criticism of modern architecture in the 1960s, he remained true to his principles over the last four decades of his career, while contemporaries like Le Corbusier moved away from it.

Designed with spatial configuration in mind, van der Rohe’s architecture broke down the barriers between interior and exterior, and that feeling of being enclosed by four walls. This created spaces that maximized their utility and offered great versatility. Known as ‘skin and bones’ by the architect,  van der Rohe’s steel-and-glass skyscrapers and tall houses became his trademark thanks to a minimal use of industrial materials, definition of space, transparency, and a rigid structure that made his designs a feature US skylines, particularly Chicago. His journey to becoming an architectural icon had to navigate two world wars to produce some of the most emblematic and widely-recognized architectural elements and structures built in the last century.

Creating in Conflict

Born in Aachen in western Germany in the spring of 1886, van der Rohe was given his first taste for design by his stonecutter father. At the age of 19 he moved to Berlin and found an apprenticeship with Bruno Paul, the furniture designer recognised for his work in Art Nouveau. And just two years later he was commissioned to design the Riehl House in Potsdam, outside Berlin. This is an impressive feat at such a tender age, but was just the beginning for van der Rohe, as his design caught the attention of one of the most progressive architects in Germany, Peter Behrens. He offered Mies a job in his office where he met Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, who helped establish the young architect as a pioneering modern force.

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World War I interrupted Mies’ career as he was conscripted in 1915. He was posted to Frankfurt-am-Main and then Berlin, before seeing out the war in Romania. This was little more than a hiatus as it was back in Berlin that his career took off alongside the brightest talents from across Europe including, Theo van Doesburg, Werner Graeff, and El Lissitzky, while also following the emerging Bauhaus, de Stijl, Expressionism, and Constructivism movements of the day. It was an exciting period of creativity, but it wouldn’t last.

This creativity was exemplified for van der Rohe in 1921 with his visionary desugn for the fully glass-sheathed Friedrichstrasse skyscraper competition, which showcased his love of steel and glass that would come to define Modernist architecture. This was the beginning of bigger (literally) and greater things for the architect, despite his personal life falling down around him after separating from his wife Ada in 1920. He co-designed the Barcelona Pavilion with architect-designer, Lilly Reich for the 1929 World’s Fair in Barcelona, which proved an enormous success thanks to its flowing spaces, rich marble walls, and custom furniture. Among the custom furniture was the Barcelona Chair that he again designed with Reich and demonstrated his ability to create enduring designs with a timeless elegance that is still produced under license by Knoll to this day.

These designs helped to form the basis of van der Rohe’s enduring legacy in Germany and his influence would only grow after taking over from Hannes Meyer as director of the Bauhaus in 1930. Germany at the time was a political melting pot and by 1933 Adolf Hitler would be appointed as Germany’s new chancellor. Van der Rohe sought to depoliticize the environment and shifted the school’s focus solely on teaching art, architecture, and design.

Even after moving the school to Berlin in 1932 it was clear that the days of the Bauhaus were numbered, as the Nazi’s influence grew. Mies took it upon himself to move the school to an abandoned telephone factory on the outskirts of Berlin using his own money, but it was seized by the Nazis. As the reality of Nazi rule dawned on van der Rohe, he closed the school and effectively ended his time as a German citizen.

Building a New Life in the U.S.A.

With war on the horizon, van der Rohe re-settled permanently in the USA in August 1938. He moved to Chicago and took up a role as the head of the College of Architecture at the Armour Institute in Chicago (known today as the Illinois Institute of Technology), where he shaped a curriculum that influenced a generation of American architects and left an indelible mark on the Chicago skyline.

It was in Chicago that van der Rohe would truly establish his success and would lead him to a meeting with the famously reserved Frank Lloyd Wright, who broke with personal convention to offer his admiration: “I admire him as an architect, respect and love him as a man.” A rare accolade from Wright that underscores the brilliance of van der Rohe. The pair bonded and the association helped van der Rohe assimilate into his new architectural community.

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Van der Rohe spent 20 years at IIT and developed ‘the second Chicago school of architecture,’ which was a simplified style of perfectly straight high-rise buildings covered by large surface areas of glass windows, perfectly exemplified The Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1949–51) in Chicago and the Seagram Building (1956–58) in New York City. His productivity and continued into the sixties as he designed urban projects like Detroit’s Lafayette Park(1959), public centres at The Neue Nationalgalerie (1968) in Berlin, as well as libraries and offices across North America, Mexico and Europe.

This approach created a new skyscraper typology, which still informs countless architects influenced by van der Rohe. Not just a single-skilled specialist, he continued to design pavilion buildings that he first tested with the Barcelona Pavilion and continued the style’s evolution with the entirely transparent Farnsworth House, which was completed in 1951 and remains one of the most enduring examples in the United States. Van der Rohe was even able to combine high rise and pavilion approaches into one composition with the three-building complex of the Chicago Federal Center.

Designing the Present

The move to America afforded van der Rohe the opportunity to evolve his Modernist approach and expand it on a far larger scale, which can still be seen by the array of sleek, glass-skinned office and apartment towers all across North America. His legacy stands tall, head and shoulders above us all, and even lifts us up with his immortal Barcelona Chair. A glance towards the sky, particularly in Chicago will reveal his role in the development of enduring Modernism that has made him one of the most influential architects of the 20th century.

Despite this, many architects rejected his strict formalism in favor of the eclecticism of Postmodernism, including the American architect Robert Venturi, who transposed his famous saying to, “less is a bore”. It hasn’t affected his legacy though as his designs and approach to architecture continue to inform teaching and practice today. Time has allowed the restrained majesty of his designs to be appreciated though. In 1968 he was given a retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, marking the beginning of enduring legacy. The Museum for Modern Art in New York followed this in the same year with the creation of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Archive, which holds a treasure trove of around 19,000 of his drawings and prints, including 1,000 by Lily Reich.

In addition, the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC all hold collections of his drawings. He was honored with the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1959, the AIA Gold Medal in 1960, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. And in 1982, his Crown Hall at IIT even appeared on a 20-cent postage stamp issued by the US Postal Service.

His passion for rich materials, surfaces, and texture reveals a creative mind equally preoccupied with the minutiae of architectural space. Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be bestowed up on van der Rohe’s designs are that they aren’t merely a footnote in history and viewed as style that belongs to the past, as his impact can still be felt today. He was the pioneer of the International Style of the 1920s that remains immortal a century later.

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