Mies van der Rohe: An Architect and his Time

This seminar introduces students to the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) one of the most influential architects of the 20th Century. His 65-year career produced a comparatively small number of buildings (and an equal number of unexecuted projects), but among those are exemplary solutions for several building types that are still influential the world over today. The course will introduce students to skills in reading and understanding architecture, to archival research, and in critically assessing the tool of an architect’s biography. This will include a critical, comparative analysis of a number of recent biographies on Mies. We will discuss which contextualizing questions to ask and put Mies at the center of a framework of artistic, social, legal, structural and critical conditions. (A)