Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig

Ludwig Mies was born in 1886 in Aachen, Germany. Trained as a contractor, he designed stucco work for an architectural firm in Aachen. In 1905, he moved to Berlin where he worked for Bruno Paul. In 1907, Ludwig designed his first building. In 1908, he joined the Behrens studio, where he collaborated with Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, and Le Corbusier, among others. He left this job in 1911 and opened his own firm in Berlin in 1912. In 1913, he added his mother’s maiden name, van der Rohe, to his name. Inspired by Mart Stam’s drawing of a cantilever chair, Ludwig designed the MR10 and MR20 in 1927. The Barcelona chair remains his most famous design to this day. From 1927 to 1931, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s furniture was produced by the Berliner Metallgewerbe Josef Müller, and from 1931 onward by the Bamberg Metallwerkstätten. He granted Thonet-Mundus exclusive sales rights for 15 chairs, some of which he designed together with Lilly Reich. From 1930 onward, Ludwig was the last director of the Bauhaus. He taught architecture, oversaw the move from Dessau to Berlin, and oversaw its closure in 1933. From that day on, he worked as a freelance architect in Berlin, and in 1937 emigrated to the United States. In the United States, he established a large architectural firm in Chicago and became director of the Amour Institute. At the Amour Institute, one of his students was Florence Schust, who later married Hans Knoll. From 1947 onward, Knoll Associats began producing Ludwig’s furniture again. In 1944, Ludwig officially became an American citizen and worked on major projects until his death in 1969, such as the Seagram Building in New York, which he designed together with Philip Johnson.