Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) has long been considered one of the most important architects of the 20th century, and his significance to the field of modern architecture is beyond dispute. In Europe, before World War II, Mies emerged as one of the most innovative leaders of the modern movement, producing visionary projects for glass and steel and executing a number of small but critically significant buildings. In the United States, after 1938, he transformed the architectonic expression of the steel frame in American architecture and left a nearly unmatched legacy of teaching and building.

Mies began his career in Europe, becoming one of the pivotal leaders of the architectural avant-garde by the early 1920s. Born in 1886 in Aachen, Germany, Mies van der Rohe had his most important early apprenticeship in the offices of Peter Behrens between 1908 and 1911. After World War I, Mies joined the utopian artists of the Novembergruppe and founded the avant-garde magazine G (Gestaltung). Around 1920, Mies designed several projects for glass skyscrapers in central Berlin, in crystalline, vertical facets of glass and suspended floor planes, just as German expressionists such as Bruno Taut and Hugo Häring were calling for a revolutionary architecture of transparency and organicism.

After 1923, Mies’s style shifted, and he came heavily under the influence of Dutch neo-plasticism and Russian suprematism. The former influence, along with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, drove Mies to experiment with independent walls and ceilings arranged in an open, pin-wheeling manner. The latter influence drove Mies to consider the reduction and abstraction of these elements into dynamic and contrapuntal compositions of pure shapes in space.

These experiments culminated in one of Mies van der Rohe’s most significant works, the German Pavilion built for the Barcelona World Exposition in 1929. Commonly known as the Barcelona Pavilion, this small, temporary structure, has been reconstructed, and remained one of the most recognized objects in the architectural history of modernism. Composed mainly of a raised terrace and a simple rectangular structure with eight cruciform columns, it set an important precedent for the Farnsworth House.

In 1930, Mies succeeded Hannes Meyer as director of the Dessau Bauhaus, remaining in that position until the Bauhaus was forcibly closed by the National Socialist government in 1933. After his arrival in the United States in 1937, Mies van der Rohe went on to significantly change the American architectural landscape, particularly during the rebuilding that immediately followed World War II.

he accepted a position as head of the architecture department at the Armour Institute of Technology, soon to be renamed the Illinois Institute of Technology. At his inaugural lecture as director of the department in 1938, Mies stated:

“In its simplest form architecture is rooted in entirely functional considerations, but it can reach up through all degrees of value to the highest sphere of spiritual existence into the realm of pure art.”

This sentence summarized what had become Mies van der Rohe’s consistent approach to design: to begin with functional considerations of structure and materials, then to refine the detailing and expression of those materials until they transcended their technical origins to become a pure art of structure and space.

In 1939, he began preliminary designs for the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology on the south side of Chicago. Its composition of low-slung rectangular buildings, arranged as subtly juxtaposed figures on a cleared urban site would constitute one of the most important examples of modernist urban design. In 1946, Mies would begin his work on the Farnsworth house, in which he was able, as in the Barcelona Pavilion, to pursue his ideas of structure and space, with minimal requirements of program. After World War II, Mies would become perhaps the most significant designers of American skyscrapers, transforming the common steel frames of such structures into subtle expressions of module, proportion and detail. Buildings such as 860-880 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago (1949-51) and the Seagram Building in New York (1958) have become canonical monuments of modernism and are studied by scholars and architects all over the world.

Barcelona Chair and Ottoman

The Barcelona chair was exclusively designed for the German Pavilion, that country’s entry for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, which was hosted by Barcelona, Spain. The design resulted from collaboration between the famous Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his longtime partner and companion, architect and designer Lilly Reich, whose contributions have only recently been acknowledged. An icon of modernism, the chair’s design was inspired by the campaign and folding chairs of ancient times.

Lilly Reich began working for the Deutscher Werkbund in 1912, an organization whose raison d’etre was to focus specifically on the German design industry, its quality, evolution and promotion. Reich was responsible for designing and organizing many of the Werkbund’s international exhibitions, and in 1921 became the organization’s first female member.

Reich and van der Rohe met in the mid-1920s and collaborated on many of these exhibition design projects until he departed for the United States in 1938. While Reich always deferred to van der Rohe in public, the reverse was said to have been the case in private. While it is naturally difficult to apportion the contributions that each made to a particular design, it is interesting and poignant to note that van der Rohe never again produced any furniture designs after their partnership ended, nor had he designed any furniture beforehand. His first patent on a furniture design was issued in 1927 and his last in 1937.

Reich’s affiliation with the Deutscher Werkbund and her architectural work with van der Rohe on their exhibition design and furniture design made them the natural choice for the Commission to design the German Pavilion in Barcelona.

Materials Used in Barcelona Chair

The Barcelona Chair frame was initially designed to be bolted together, but was redesigned in 1950 using stainless steel, which allowed the frame to be formed by a seamless piece of metal, giving it a smoother appearance. Bovine leather replaced the ivory-colored pigskin which was used for the original pieces.

The functional design and elements of it that were patented by Mies in Germany, Spain and the United States in the 1930s have since expired. The Barcelona chair was manufactured in the US and Europe in limited production from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 1953, six years after Reich’s death, van der Rohe ceded his rights and his name on the design to Knoll, knowing that his design patents were expired. This collaboration then renewed popularity in the design.

Knoll claims to be the current licensed manufacturer and holder of all trademark rights to the design. In 1965, Knoll purchased the trademark rights to the Barcelona word from Drexel. In 2004, Knoll received trade dress rights to the design from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Despite these trademarks, a large replica market continues. Gordon International New York has continued to manufacture the designs since the 1970s, even after a court battle against Knoll in 2005. In 2008, another court battle erupted between Knoll and Alphaville Design California; the outcome is pending Summary Judgment in Federal District court.