Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“Less is more” – hardly any other sentence has characterised modern design as much as this one. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was not only an architect, but also a thinker of space. His clear, minimalist design language became the epitome of modernism – even today.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) was one of the key figures of Classical Modernism in architecture and design. As the last director of the Bauhaus before its forced closure in 1933, he stood for a radical reorientation in design: away from ornament and towards structure. As early as the 1920s, he designed visionary buildings made of glass and steel – such as the famous Barcelona Pavilion (1929), which set standards with its clear lines, open spaces and high-quality materials.
His furniture design was just as style-defining as his architecture: the “Barcelona Chair”, designed together with Lilly Reich, combines elegance and function in almost perfect form. After emigrating to the USA, Mies shaped the so-called “International Style” architecture as head of the architecture department at the Illinois Institute of Technology and with buildings such as the Seagram Building in New York – functional, structured, restrained. But despite all the reduction, the dignity of the space was close to his heart. For Mies, the essential thing was not the visible alone, but the order behind it. His works show this: Minimalism is not renunciation – but concentration on what counts.