A landmark survey offering a nuanced and deeply researched account of the career and life of
the iconic modern architect “A balanced look at the architect in the context of his
reception and impact complete with photographs of Mies’s realized works and a selection of his
early sketches. . . . In describing the architect’s often radical sometimes brilliant and
deeply flawed vision . . . Mr. Neumann simultaneously tells the story of 20th-century American
and European modernism.”—Cammy Brothers Wall Street Journal “Holiday Gift Books:
Architecture” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) was a German-born American architect
and designer whose work in Europe and North America has had an enduring influence on modern and
contemporary architecture worldwide. During his sixty-year career he fundamentally rethought
architectural types that shaped modern life including the office building apartment building
and private home. True to his alleged dictum “less is more ” Mies van der Rohe’s style is
characterized by utmost simplicity elegance of materials and radical formal and functional
innovation as exemplified by such iconic projects as the Farnsworth House in Plano Illinois
and the Seagram Building in New York. In this book renowned architectural historian
Dietrich Neumann presents a new critical look at Mies and complicates the established
narrative about him. Diverging from the reverential posture of many existing accounts Neumann
insists on the importance of the contemporary context—social political and architectural—for
understanding the architect’s life and work. The book draws on many overlooked archival and
primary sources to demonstrate how and why Mies’s designs were shaped and received
foregrounding contemporary critics’ responses and the work of Mies’s collaborators and peers.
It presents several previously unknown buildings projects and furniture designs and
challenges long-established interpretations of key works. Comprehensively illustrated and
covering the entirety of Mies’s career this ambitious book is the most substantial account to
date of the life and work of one of the most important architects of the twentieth century.
