Farnsworth House

The Farnsworth House is a country house south of the city of Plano in Illinois from 1950 /51.

History

1945 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was given by Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a wealthy Chicago doctor commissioned to design a weekend house, into which they could retreat for rest and exercise their hobbies.

Mies van der Rohe ran a huge planning effort and needed for this construction within three years, thousands of hours of work.

Created was the building in the years 1950/1951 and is now a famous building of modern architecture.

Edith Farnsworth was not particularly fond of the purism of their house, they cost a lot of money, and manifested the architect against the following:

I wanted something " meaningful ", and all I got was this smooth, superficial sophistry.

In 1972 the building of Edith Farnsworth was sold and publicly available after restoration by a grandson of Mies van der Rohe. Today it is located after an auction where it has earned a profit of $ 7,500,000, owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Description

The building is about 1.6 m lifted from the ground, not least to withstand the flooding of the nearby Fox River. Just as well, can be interpreted as the increase in volumetric reversal of a classical base. In addition to a living room, the Farnsworth House consists of a loggia and a slightly lower terrace. Stairs with relatively little slope connecting the different levels together.

The interior is about 140 square meters and up to a destination in the middle block with the necessary installations such as kitchen, bathroom, etc. free of construction and partitions. Only one wall of this box is led to the laying of necessary plumbing lines to the ceiling.

The exterior walls are completely made ​​of glass, allowing in any situation a direct reference to nature, as a screen only light curtains are designed from silk. Although no air-conditioning was provided, the house has only two small, high-altitude window. Also, there is only a single door which leads to the outside.

Architecture

The Farnsworth House is loud Mies van der Rohe " virtually nothing ". The acting in the main elements are the horizontal, which is made clear both by its solid design and the indented steel supports. In addition, the transparent held vertical surfaces support the viewer the impression of floating, because the house is created for the sake of flood protection on vehicles 1.6 meters above the ground.

The Farnsworth House is a single-room house, located on a 3.9 acre meadow land and takes input a surface area of 8.85 to 23.45 meters.

The blankets are made of steel frame together with the steel columns (double - T-beam ), which form a self-supporting steel skeleton construction. Filled the frame with concrete slabs. The façade of large panes of glass is fixed on brackets to the supporting external supports.

Overall, coined by Mies van der Rohe's maxim less is more expressed in the reduced simple design ( "less is more " ) from. Mies van der Rohe was of the view that the architecture all non - essentials should be excluded, and he said himself:

This home is much more important than size or cost foreshadow it. It is a prototype for all glass buildings.