Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe 
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969) was born
in Achen, Germany. As a young boy he attended a
cathedral school, and he also learned practical
work like masonry from his father.
When he was nineteen years old he went to
Berlin, and there he worked for Bruno Paul, who
at the time was a very famous cabinet-maker in
Germany. Three years later he moved on and he
started working for the famous Peter Behrens, who
had also thought famous architects like Walter Gropius
and Le Corbusier.
During World War I Mies Van Der Rohe built
bridges and roads in the Balkan, and when the war
was over his architectural career started
blooming in Germany. He financed a magazin called
G, and he was strongly associated with the
Novembergruppe; an organization promoting modern
art. Mies Van Der Rohe also designed the German
pavillion for the International World Exhibition
at Barcelona, Spain (1929), and the Trugendhat
House in Brno, Czechoslovakia (1930). With
elementary compositions, fundamentalism and
geometrical purity the European style of
architecture reached international fame. The new
architecture showed functionalism, something that
a lot of people seemed to be craving at that
time.
Between 1930-1933 Mies Van Der Rohe
was the director of the Bauhaus
school of art, but when the nazis took over
Germany he moved to the U.S. in1938. He soon
became the director of the Illinois Institute of
Technology in Chicago.
While in the U.S. he planned the Edith
Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1950), some
of the Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago
(1951), and together with Philip Johnson he
planned the bronze-tingle Seagram building in New
York. He also designed the Berlin National
Gallery in Berlin, Germany. Next to La Corbusier
Mies Van Der Rohe is considered a twentieth
century architectural master.
The Seagram building in New York
The National Gallery in Berlin
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