Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the final Director of the Bauhaus, famously explained that he established the floor height of the Farnsworth House just above the level of the 100 year flood. But you rarely see the Fox River make an appearance in any photographs of the building. The inspiration for transforming what in lesser hands could have been merely a generic steel frame building rooted to a foundation into a levitating platform is conspicuous by its absence. To a great degree, Mies annexes the context to make his architecture special, and, in many cases such as this one, sublime. The full context of this operation is missing. The exhibit Mies in Translation introduces context in order to more productively frame and better understand Mies’s work. Big thanks to Gerhard Schutte for translating portions of Mies’s personal copy of Der Gegensatz into English and Mike McCarthy for making 1/6 scale models the unrealized Mies chairs. Thanks to Peter Palumbo for lending us the original Mies chair sketches. #moma #peterpalumbo

Mies in Translation
The Farnsworth House
“What does context reveal about  Mies van der Rohe’s architecture?”