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Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe was born in Aachen, Germany in 1888. His year of birth is significant in American architecture because it was the end of an era in architectural design, marked by the Louis H. Sullivan's Auditorium Building, then being constructed in Chicago.
The Auditorium Building was a profound architectural statement for masonry construction and the principles of design taught at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Regarded as something of a final statement, The Auditorium Building affirmed that buildings could be grand without recourse to excessive ornamentation. This aspect was the critical mass for change.
Also coming to the fore at the turn of the century were two new influences on architectural design which would change the face of America. First, new building materials: concrete, steel, and new types of glass. These opened immense possibilities for designers. The second influence was a school of architecture based in Germany--Bauhaus. Here, designers began to shape the new materials into structures.
Mies Van Der Rohe was first a staff member at Bauhaus and, for a time, director, before he brought his vision to America. He defined the design potentials of steel, recognizing that its use could free interior space. His dictum, "Less Is More", succinctly describes all of his work.
Superfluity and ornament had no place in his designs. His Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago--steel and glass high rises-- have been replicated throughout America and, indeed, throughout the world.
Austerity, clarity of function, and fuller realization of space found mature expression in his 1956 design of the Seagram Building in New York City, done as a collaboration with another architect, Phillip Johnson. Brown glass and bronze over the height and use of steel to enable an open ground level for a plaza define this architectural masterpiece. Phillip Johnson, incidentally, went on to design the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center in 1962.
The later design of the Lever Building, featuring curtain wall and expanded use of the ground level, pays direct and profound homage to Mies Van Der Rohe's influence.
As the impact of Miesian design began to change the downtown core of urban America, monument and grandeur in architecture were redefined. Modernity was now being shaped of steel, glass and concrete, rising to graceful, towering heights impossible with previously conventional building materials.
Miesian economy and simplicity of design, the notion that form should follow function, found its way even into furniture design. Ergonomics developed as a science. To some extent, this too grew from the Bauhaus regimen of design principles, in which Mies Van Der Rohe was a pioneer.
It is not difficult to understand why Van Der Rohe's name is linked with two other giants- Frank Lloyd Wright and LeCorbusier -who defined and shaped not only the style, but the quality of style in America's architecture.
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