Chicago Federal Complex , built 1964–1974 Chicago Federal Center Plaza, also known as Chicago Federal Plaza, unified three buildings of varying scales: the mid-rise
Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse, the high-rise
John C. Kluczynski Building, and the single-story Post Office building. The complex's plot area extends over two blocks; a one-block site, bounded by Jackson, Clark, Adams, and Dearborn streets, contains the Kluczynski Federal Building and U.S. Post Office Loop Station, while a parcel on an adjacent block to the east contains the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. The structural framing of the buildings is formed of high-tensile bolted steel and concrete. The exterior curtain walls are defined by projecting steel I-beam mullions covered with flat black graphite paint, characteristic of Mies's designs. The balance of the curtain walls are of bronze-tinted glass panes, framed in shiny aluminum, and separated by steel spandrels, also covered with flat black graphite paint. The entire complex is organized on a 28-foot grid pattern subdivided into six 4-foot, 8-inch modules. This pattern extends from the granite-paved plaza into the ground-floor lobbies of the two tower buildings with the grid lines continuing vertically up the buildings and integrating each component of the complex. Associated architects that have played a role in the complex's long history from 1959 to 1974 include Schmidt, Garden & Erickson; C.F. Murphy Associates; and A. Epstein & Sons.
Edith Farnsworth House (1946–1951) Between 1946 and 1951, Mies van der Rohe designed and built the
Edith Farnsworth House, a weekend retreat outside Chicago for an independent professional woman, Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Here, Mies explored the relationship between people, shelter, and nature. The glass pavilion is raised six feet above a floodplain next to the Fox River, surrounded by forest and rural prairies. The house took a while to be built due to the underlying issues between Mies and Edith Farnsworth. There was a complex relationship between the two for a variety of reasons, some related to personal feelings and others to design considerations. Back and forth legal disputes led to these ongoing issues despite the beautiful outcome of the design. The highly crafted pristine white structural frame and all-glass walls define a simple rectilinear interior space, allowing nature and light to envelop the interior space. A wood-paneled fireplace (also housing mechanical equipment, kitchen, and toilets) is positioned within the open space to suggest living, dining and sleeping spaces without using walls. No partitions touch the surrounding all-glass enclosure. Without solid exterior walls, full-height draperies on a perimeter track allow freedom to provide full or partial privacy when and where desired. The house has been described as sublime, a temple hovering between heaven and earth, a poem, a work of art. The Edith Farnsworth House and its wooded site was purchased at auction for US$7.5 million by preservation groups in 2004 and is now owned and operated by the
National Trust for Historic Preservation as a public
museum. The building influenced the creation of hundreds of modernist glass houses, most notably the
Glass House by Philip Johnson, located near New York City and also now owned by the National Trust.
860–880 Lake Shore Drive , Chicago, Illinois (1949–1951) The
860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments were built between 1948 and 1951 and came to define postwar US Modernism. These towers, with façades of steel and glass, were radical departures from the typical residential brick apartment buildings. Mies designed a series of four middle-income high-rise apartment buildings for developer Herbert Greenwald. The towers were simple rectangular boxes with a non-hierarchical wall enclosure, raised on stilts above a glass-enclosed lobby. The lobby is set back from the perimeter columns, which were exposed around the perimeter of the building above, creating a modern
colonnade. This configuration created a feeling of light, openness, and freedom of movement at the ground level that became the prototype for countless new
high rises designed both by Mies's office and his followers.
Seagram Building Although now acclaimed and widely influential as an urban design feature, Mies had to convince
Seagram officials that a taller tower with significant "unused" open space at ground level would enhance the presence and prestige of the building. Mies's design included a bronze curtain wall with external H-shaped
mullions that were exaggerated in depth beyond what was structurally necessary. Detractors criticized it as having committed Adolf Loos's "
crime of ornamentation". Philip Johnson had a role in interior materials selections, and he designed the sumptuous
Four Seasons Restaurant. The Seagram Building is said to be an early example of the innovative "fast-track" construction process, where design documentation and construction are done concurrently.
McCormick House During 1951–1952, Mies designed the steel, glass, and brick McCormick House, located in
Elmhurst, Illinois (18 miles west of the Chicago Loop), for real-estate developer Robert Hall McCormick, Jr. A one-story adaptation of the exterior curtain wall of his famous 860–880 Lake Shore Drive towers, it served as a prototype for an unbuilt series of speculative houses to be constructed in Melrose Park, Illinois. The house has since been relocated and reconfigured as a part of the Elmhurst Art Museum.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Mies designed two buildings for the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) as additions to the Caroline Wiess Law Building. In 1953, the MFAH commissioned Mies van der Rohe to create a master plan for the institution. He designed two additions to the building—Cullinan Hall, completed in 1958, and the Brown Pavilion, completed in 1974. A renowned example of the International Style, these portions of the Caroline Wiess Law Building comprise one of only two Mies-designed museums in the world.
Two buildings in Baltimore, MD The
One Charles Center, built in 1962, is a 23-story aluminum and glass building that heralded the beginning of Baltimore's downtown modern buildings. The
Highfield House, just to the northeast of the
Johns Hopkins Homewood campus, was built in 1964 as a rental apartment building. The 15-story concrete tower became a residential condominium building in 1979. Both buildings are now on the National Register of Historic Places.
National Gallery, Berlin , Berlin Mies's last work was the
Neue Nationalgalerie art museum, the New National Gallery for the
Berlin National Gallery. Considered one of the most perfect statements of his architectural approach, the upper pavilion is a precise composition of monumental steel columns and a cantilevered (overhanging) roof plane with a glass enclosure. The simple square glass pavilion is a powerful expression of his ideas about flexible interior space, defined by transparent walls and supported by an external structural frame.
Mies Building at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana In 1952, a fraternity commissioned Mies to design a building on the
Indiana University campus in
Bloomington, Indiana. The plan was not realized during his lifetime, but the design was rediscovered in 2013, and in 2019 the university's Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design announced they would be constructing it with blessing of his grandchildren. As of June 2022, the building is completed and open.
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library Mies designed
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC. The building was completed in 1972 at a cost of $18 million and three years after Mies's death. It is the central facility of the
District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL), and is his only realized library and his only building in Washington D.C. ==Furniture==