Farnsworth House
Encyclopedia
The Farnsworth House was designed and constructed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
between 1945-51. It is a one-room weekend retreat in a once-rural setting, located 55 miles (88.5 km) southwest of Chicago
's downtown on a 60 acres (24.3 ha) estate site, adjoining the Fox River
, south of the city of Plano, Illinois
. The steel and glass house
was commissioned by Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a prominent Chicago nephrologist, as a place where she could engage in her hobbies: playing the violin, translating poetry, and enjoying nature. Mies created a 1500 square feet (139.4 m²) house that is widely recognized as an iconic masterpiece of International Style of architecture
. The home was designated a National Historic Landmark
in 2006, after joining the National Register of Historic Places
in 2004. The house is currently owned and operated as a house museum by the historic preservation group, National Trust for Historic Preservation
.
In September 2008, the house was flood
ed by rains from the remnants of Hurricane Ike
. Water levels reached about 18 inches (45.7 cm) above the floor and the 5 feet (1.5 m) stilts upon which the house rests. Much of the furniture
was saved by elevating it above the flood waters. The house was closed to the public for the remainder of 2008 for repairs and reopened for public visitation in spring 2009.
was to design the house as if it were for himself. Farnsworth had purchased the riverfront property from the publisher of the Chicago Tribune
, Colonel Robert R. McCormick. Mies developed the design in time for it to be included in an exhibit on his work at MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art
in New York in 1947.
After completion of design, the project was placed on hold awaiting an inheritance from an ailing aunt. Mies was to act as the general contractor as well as architect. Work began in 1950 and was substantially completed in 1951. The commission was an ideal one for any architect, but was marred by a very publicized dispute between Farnsworth and Mies that began near the end of construction. The total cost of the house was $74,000 in 1951, or about $1,000,000 in 2006 dollars. A cost overrun
of $16,000 over the approved pre-construction budget of $58,400, was due to escalating post-war material prices resulting from inflationary shortages arising from the mobilization for the Korean War
. Near the completion of construction, Mies filed a lawsuit for non-payment of $28,173 in construction costs. The owner then filed a counter suit for damages due to alleged malpractice
. Mies' attorneys proved that Farnsworth had approved the plans and budget increases, and the court ordered the owner to pay her bills. Farnsworth's malpractice accusations were dismissed as unsubstantiated. It was a bitter and hollow victory for Mies, considering the painful publicity that followed. The conflict resulted in an unfinished site and an unfurnished interior. The construction of a teak wardrobe closet and bronze screened porch were completed to Mies’ designs by former employee William Dunlap and a local mill worker who acted as middleman. Mies never spoke about his rumored relationship, nor communicated with Edith again.
Edith continued to use the house as her weekend retreat for the next 21 years, often hosting architectural notables visiting to see the work of the world-famous architect. In 1968, the local highway department condemned a 2 acres (8,093.7 m²) portion of the property adjoining the house for a new raised highway bridge over the Fox River. Farnsworth sued to stop the project but lost the court case. She sold the house in 1972, retiring to her villa in Italy.
In 1972, Farnsworth House was purchased by British property magnate, art collector, and architectural aficionado Lord Peter Palumbo. He removed the bronze screen enclosure of the porch, added air conditioning, extensive landscaping and his art collections to the grounds, including sculptures by Andy Goldsworthy
, Anthony Caro
, and Richard Serra
. After owning the property for 31 years, Palumbo removed the art and put the property up for sale at auction, raising serious concerns about the future of the building. Preservationists and contributors from around the world, including the Friends of the Farnsworth House, began a concerted preservation and fund-raising effort to keep the house on its original site. With this financial support, the National Trust for Historic Preservation
and Landmarks Illinois were able to purchase the house in December 2003 for a reported $7.5 million. Now operated as a house museum, the Farnsworth House is open to the public, with tours conducted by the National Trust. The house is listed in the National Register and is designated a National Historic Landmark
by the United States Department of the Interior.
opens the interior to its natural surroundings to an extreme degree. Two distinctly expressed horizontal slabs, which form the roof and the floor, sandwich an open space for living. The slab edges are defined by exposed steel
structural members painted pure white. The house is elevated 5 in 3 in (1.6 m) above a flood plain by eight wide flange steel columns which are attached to the sides of the floor and ceiling slabs. The slabs' ends extend beyond the column supports, creating cantilevers. The house seems to float weightlessly above the ground it occupies. A third floating slab, an attached terrace
, acts as a transition between the living area and the ground. The house is accessed by two sets of wide steps connecting ground to terrace and then to porch.
Mies found the large open exhibit halls of the turn of the century to be very much in character with his sense of the industrial era. Here he applied the concept of an unobstructed space that is flexible for use by people. The interior appears to be a single open room, its space ebbing and flowing around two wood blocks; one a wardrobe cabinet and the other a kitchen, toilet, and fireplace
block (the "core"). The larger fireplace-kitchen core seems like a separate house nesting within the larger glass house. The building is essentially one large room filled with freestanding elements that provide subtle differentiations within an open space, implied but not dictated, zones for sleeping, cooking, dressing, eating, and sitting. Very private areas such as toilets, and mechanical rooms are enclosed within the core. Drawings recently made public by MOMA
indicate that the architect provided ceiling details that allows for the addition of curtain tracks that would allow privacy separations of the open spaces into three "rooms". The drapery was never installed.
Mies applied this space concept, with variations, to his later buildings, most notably at Crown Hall
, his IIT
campus masterpiece. The notion of a single room that can be freely used or zoned in any way, with flexibility to accommodate changing uses, free of interior supports, enclosed in glass and supported by a minimum of structural framing located at the exterior, is the architectural ideal that defines Mies' American career. The Farnsworth House is significant as his first complete realization of this ideal, a prototype for his vision of what modern architecture in an era of technology should be.
The Farnsworth House addresses basic issues about the relationship between the individual and his society. Mies viewed the technology-driven modern era in which an ordinary individual exists as largely beyond his control. But he believed the individual can and should exist in harmony with the culture of his time to successfully fulfill himself. His career was a long and patient search for an architecture that would be a true expression of the essential soul of his epoch, the Holy Grail
of German Modernism
. He perceived our epoch as the era of industrial mass production, a civilization shaped by the forces of rapid technological development. Mies wanted to use architecture as a tool to help reconcile the individual spirit with the new mass society in which he exists.
His answer to the issue is to accept the need for an orderly framework as necessary for existence, while making space for the freedom needed by the individual human spirit to flourish. He created buildings with free and open space within a minimal framework, using expressed structural columns. He did not believe in the use of architecture for social engineering of human behavior as many other modernists did, but his architecture does represent ideals and aspirations. His mature design work is a physical expression of his understanding of the modern epoch. He provides the occupants of his buildings flexible and unobstructed space in which to fulfill themselves as individuals, despite their anonymous condition in the modern industrial culture. The materials of his buildings, industrial manufactured products like mill-formed steel and plate glass, certainly represent the character of the modern era, but he counter-balances these with traditional luxuries such as Roman travertine and exotic wood veneers as valid parts of modern life. Mies accepted the problems of industrial society as facts to be dealt with, and offered his idealized vision of how technology can be made beautiful and can support the individual. He suggests that the downsides of technology decried by late 19th century critics such as John Ruskin
, can be solved with human creativity, and shows us how in the architecture of this house.
Reconnecting the individual with nature is one of the great challenges of an urbanized society. The 60 acres (242,811.6 m²) rural site offered Mies an opportunity to bring man's relationship to nature
into the forefront. Here he highlights the individual's connection to nature through the medium of a man-made shelter. Mies said: "We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and the human being to a higher unity". Glass walls and open interior space are the features that create an intense connection with the outdoor environment, while the exposed structure provides a framework that reduces opaque exterior walls to a minimum. The careful site design and integration of the exterior environment represents a concerted effort to achieve an architecture wedded to its natural context.
Mies conceived the building as an indoor-outdoor architectural shelter simultaneously independent of and intertwined with the domain of nature. Mies did not build on the flood-free upland portions of the site, choosing instead to tempt the dangerous forces nature by building directly on the flood plain near the rivers edge. Philip Johnson referred to this type of experience of nature as "safe danger". The enclosed space and a screened porch
are elevated five feet on a raised floor platform, just slightly above the 100 year flood level, with a large intermediate terrace level. The house has flooded substantially above the living level floor level twice, in 1956 and 1996 (both in excess of FEMA 500 year flood levels), causing significant damage to utilities, wood veneer
s, glass and to furnishings. The site experienced heavy rains and floodwaters rising to within two feet of the main floor in August 2007 threatened again in 2007
, setting curators scrambling to protect the house and its contents from any further rise in the flood level.
The house has a distinctly independent personality, yet also evokes strong feelings of a connection to the land. The levels of the platforms restate the multiple levels of the site, in a kind of poetic architectural rhyme, not unlike the horizontal balconies and rocks do at Wright's Fallingwater
. The house is anchored to the site in the cooling shadow of a large and majestic black maple tree. As Mies often did, the entrance is located on the sunny side, facing the river instead of the street, moving visitors around corners and revealing views of the house and site from various angles as they approach the front door. The simple elongated cubic form of the house is parallel to the flow of the river, and the terrace platform is slipped downstream in relation to the elevated porch and living platform. Outdoor living spaces are extensions of the indoor space, with a screened porch (screens now gone) and open terrace. Yet the man made always remains clearly distinct from the natural by its geometric forms, highlighted by the choice of white as its primary color.
era. The weekend house became a lightning rod for anti-modernist publications, exemplified in the April 1953 issue of House Beautiful
, which attacked it as a communist inspired effort to supplant traditional American styles. Even Frank Lloyd Wright
denounced the Bauhaus
and International Style
as un-American.
Large areas of glass wall, flat roofs, purging of ornament, and a perceived lack of traditional warmth and coziness were International Style features that were particular talking points of attack. Still, the Farnsworth House has continued to receive wide critical acclaim as a masterpiece of the modernist style, and Mies went on to receive the presidential Medal of Freedom for his contribution to American architecture and culture. Prominent architect and critic Philip Johnson
was inspired by the design to build his own Glass House
in 1947. In the 21st century, Pulitzer Prize
winning architectural critics Paul Goldberger
and Blair Kamin
have both declared the house a masterpiece of modern architecture. Its timeless quality is reflected by the reverent fascination in the minimalist house shown by a new generation of design professionals and enthusiasts.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
between 1945-51. It is a one-room weekend retreat in a once-rural setting, located 55 miles (88.5 km) southwest of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
's downtown on a 60 acres (24.3 ha) estate site, adjoining the Fox River
Fox River (Illinois River tributary)
The Fox River is a tributary of the Illinois River in the states of Wisconsin and Illinois in the United States. There are two other "Fox Rivers" in southern Illinois: the Fox River and a smaller "Fox River" that joins the Wabash River near New Harmony, Indiana.-Wisconsin:The Fox River rises near...
, south of the city of Plano, Illinois
Plano, Illinois
Plano is a city in Kendall County, Illinois, United States near Aurora, with a population of 5,633 at the 2000 census. The city is rapidly growing with new subdivisions such as Lakewood Springs completed and several other developments under construction or in the planning stages. Former Speaker...
. The steel and glass house
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
was commissioned by Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a prominent Chicago nephrologist, as a place where she could engage in her hobbies: playing the violin, translating poetry, and enjoying nature. Mies created a 1500 square feet (139.4 m²) house that is widely recognized as an iconic masterpiece of International Style of architecture
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
. The home was designated a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
in 2006, after joining the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 2004. The house is currently owned and operated as a house museum by the historic preservation group, National Trust for Historic Preservation
National Trust for Historic Preservation
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is an American member-supported organization that was founded in 1949 by congressional charter to support preservation of historic buildings and neighborhoods through a range of programs and activities, including the publication of Preservation...
.
In September 2008, the house was flood
Flood
A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water...
ed by rains from the remnants of Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike was the second-costliest hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States, the costliest hurricane ever to impact Cuba and the second most active hurricane to reach the Canadian mainland in the Great Lakes Region after Hurricane Hazel in 1954...
. Water levels reached about 18 inches (45.7 cm) above the floor and the 5 feet (1.5 m) stilts upon which the house rests. Much of the furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
was saved by elevating it above the flood waters. The house was closed to the public for the remainder of 2008 for repairs and reopened for public visitation in spring 2009.
History
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was retained by Dr. Edith Farnsworth to design a weekend retreat during a dinner party in 1945. The wealthy client was highly intelligent, articulate, and intent on building a very special work of modern architecture. The programBrief (architecture)
An architectural brief is, in its broadest sense, a requirement a client may have that an architect designs to meet, usually by creating a building to accommodate the requirement. A brief is a written document that might be anything from a single page to a multiple volume set of documents...
was to design the house as if it were for himself. Farnsworth had purchased the riverfront property from the publisher of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, Colonel Robert R. McCormick. Mies developed the design in time for it to be included in an exhibit on his work at MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York in 1947.
After completion of design, the project was placed on hold awaiting an inheritance from an ailing aunt. Mies was to act as the general contractor as well as architect. Work began in 1950 and was substantially completed in 1951. The commission was an ideal one for any architect, but was marred by a very publicized dispute between Farnsworth and Mies that began near the end of construction. The total cost of the house was $74,000 in 1951, or about $1,000,000 in 2006 dollars. A cost overrun
Cost overrun
A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, is an unexpected cost incurred in excess of a budgeted amount due to an under-estimation of the actual cost during budgeting...
of $16,000 over the approved pre-construction budget of $58,400, was due to escalating post-war material prices resulting from inflationary shortages arising from the mobilization for the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. Near the completion of construction, Mies filed a lawsuit for non-payment of $28,173 in construction costs. The owner then filed a counter suit for damages due to alleged malpractice
Malpractice
In law, malpractice is a type of negligence in, which the professional under a duty to act, fails to follow generally accepted professional standards, and that breach of duty is the proximate cause of injury to a plaintiff who suffers harm...
. Mies' attorneys proved that Farnsworth had approved the plans and budget increases, and the court ordered the owner to pay her bills. Farnsworth's malpractice accusations were dismissed as unsubstantiated. It was a bitter and hollow victory for Mies, considering the painful publicity that followed. The conflict resulted in an unfinished site and an unfurnished interior. The construction of a teak wardrobe closet and bronze screened porch were completed to Mies’ designs by former employee William Dunlap and a local mill worker who acted as middleman. Mies never spoke about his rumored relationship, nor communicated with Edith again.
Edith continued to use the house as her weekend retreat for the next 21 years, often hosting architectural notables visiting to see the work of the world-famous architect. In 1968, the local highway department condemned a 2 acres (8,093.7 m²) portion of the property adjoining the house for a new raised highway bridge over the Fox River. Farnsworth sued to stop the project but lost the court case. She sold the house in 1972, retiring to her villa in Italy.
In 1972, Farnsworth House was purchased by British property magnate, art collector, and architectural aficionado Lord Peter Palumbo. He removed the bronze screen enclosure of the porch, added air conditioning, extensive landscaping and his art collections to the grounds, including sculptures by Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy, OBE is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland.-Life and career:The son of F...
, Anthony Caro
Anthony Caro
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro, OM, CBE is an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects.-Background and early life:...
, and Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
. After owning the property for 31 years, Palumbo removed the art and put the property up for sale at auction, raising serious concerns about the future of the building. Preservationists and contributors from around the world, including the Friends of the Farnsworth House, began a concerted preservation and fund-raising effort to keep the house on its original site. With this financial support, the National Trust for Historic Preservation
National Trust for Historic Preservation
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is an American member-supported organization that was founded in 1949 by congressional charter to support preservation of historic buildings and neighborhoods through a range of programs and activities, including the publication of Preservation...
and Landmarks Illinois were able to purchase the house in December 2003 for a reported $7.5 million. Now operated as a house museum, the Farnsworth House is open to the public, with tours conducted by the National Trust. The house is listed in the National Register and is designated a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
by the United States Department of the Interior.
Configuration
The essential characteristics of the house are immediately apparent. The extensive use of clear floor-to-ceiling glassGlass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
opens the interior to its natural surroundings to an extreme degree. Two distinctly expressed horizontal slabs, which form the roof and the floor, sandwich an open space for living. The slab edges are defined by exposed steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
structural members painted pure white. The house is elevated 5 in 3 in (1.6 m) above a flood plain by eight wide flange steel columns which are attached to the sides of the floor and ceiling slabs. The slabs' ends extend beyond the column supports, creating cantilevers. The house seems to float weightlessly above the ground it occupies. A third floating slab, an attached terrace
Terrace (building)
A terrace is an outdoor, occupiable extension of a building above ground level. Although its physical characteristics may vary to a great degree, a terrace will generally be larger than a balcony and will have an "open-top" facing the sky...
, acts as a transition between the living area and the ground. The house is accessed by two sets of wide steps connecting ground to terrace and then to porch.
Mies found the large open exhibit halls of the turn of the century to be very much in character with his sense of the industrial era. Here he applied the concept of an unobstructed space that is flexible for use by people. The interior appears to be a single open room, its space ebbing and flowing around two wood blocks; one a wardrobe cabinet and the other a kitchen, toilet, and fireplace
Fireplace
A fireplace is an architectural structure to contain a fire for heating and, especially historically, for cooking. A fire is contained in a firebox or firepit; a chimney or other flue allows gas and particulate exhaust to escape...
block (the "core"). The larger fireplace-kitchen core seems like a separate house nesting within the larger glass house. The building is essentially one large room filled with freestanding elements that provide subtle differentiations within an open space, implied but not dictated, zones for sleeping, cooking, dressing, eating, and sitting. Very private areas such as toilets, and mechanical rooms are enclosed within the core. Drawings recently made public by MOMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
indicate that the architect provided ceiling details that allows for the addition of curtain tracks that would allow privacy separations of the open spaces into three "rooms". The drapery was never installed.
Mies applied this space concept, with variations, to his later buildings, most notably at Crown Hall
S.R. Crown Hall
S. R. Crown Hall, designed by the German-born Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is the home of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois.-History:...
, his IIT
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
campus masterpiece. The notion of a single room that can be freely used or zoned in any way, with flexibility to accommodate changing uses, free of interior supports, enclosed in glass and supported by a minimum of structural framing located at the exterior, is the architectural ideal that defines Mies' American career. The Farnsworth House is significant as his first complete realization of this ideal, a prototype for his vision of what modern architecture in an era of technology should be.
Architecture as an Expression of the Times
Holy Grail
The Holy Grail is a sacred object figuring in literature and certain Christian traditions, most often identified with the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers...
of German Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
. He perceived our epoch as the era of industrial mass production, a civilization shaped by the forces of rapid technological development. Mies wanted to use architecture as a tool to help reconcile the individual spirit with the new mass society in which he exists.
His answer to the issue is to accept the need for an orderly framework as necessary for existence, while making space for the freedom needed by the individual human spirit to flourish. He created buildings with free and open space within a minimal framework, using expressed structural columns. He did not believe in the use of architecture for social engineering of human behavior as many other modernists did, but his architecture does represent ideals and aspirations. His mature design work is a physical expression of his understanding of the modern epoch. He provides the occupants of his buildings flexible and unobstructed space in which to fulfill themselves as individuals, despite their anonymous condition in the modern industrial culture. The materials of his buildings, industrial manufactured products like mill-formed steel and plate glass, certainly represent the character of the modern era, but he counter-balances these with traditional luxuries such as Roman travertine and exotic wood veneers as valid parts of modern life. Mies accepted the problems of industrial society as facts to be dealt with, and offered his idealized vision of how technology can be made beautiful and can support the individual. He suggests that the downsides of technology decried by late 19th century critics such as John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, can be solved with human creativity, and shows us how in the architecture of this house.
Reconnecting the individual with nature is one of the great challenges of an urbanized society. The 60 acres (242,811.6 m²) rural site offered Mies an opportunity to bring man's relationship to nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
into the forefront. Here he highlights the individual's connection to nature through the medium of a man-made shelter. Mies said: "We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and the human being to a higher unity". Glass walls and open interior space are the features that create an intense connection with the outdoor environment, while the exposed structure provides a framework that reduces opaque exterior walls to a minimum. The careful site design and integration of the exterior environment represents a concerted effort to achieve an architecture wedded to its natural context.
Mies conceived the building as an indoor-outdoor architectural shelter simultaneously independent of and intertwined with the domain of nature. Mies did not build on the flood-free upland portions of the site, choosing instead to tempt the dangerous forces nature by building directly on the flood plain near the rivers edge. Philip Johnson referred to this type of experience of nature as "safe danger". The enclosed space and a screened porch
Porch
A porch is external to the walls of the main building proper, but may be enclosed by screen, latticework, broad windows, or other light frame walls extending from the main structure.There are various styles of porches, all of which depend on the architectural tradition of its location...
are elevated five feet on a raised floor platform, just slightly above the 100 year flood level, with a large intermediate terrace level. The house has flooded substantially above the living level floor level twice, in 1956 and 1996 (both in excess of FEMA 500 year flood levels), causing significant damage to utilities, wood veneer
Wood veneer
In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood, usually thinner than 3 mm , that are typically glued onto core panels to produce flat panels such as doors, tops and panels for cabinets, parquet floors and parts of furniture. They are also used in marquetry...
s, glass and to furnishings. The site experienced heavy rains and floodwaters rising to within two feet of the main floor in August 2007 threatened again in 2007
2007 Midwest flooding
The 2007 Midwest flooding was a major flooding event that occurred in the Midwestern United States in the third week of August 2007. While Hurricane Dean was affecting the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico, and Tropical Storm Erin was affecting Oklahoma and Texas, a persistent storm system...
, setting curators scrambling to protect the house and its contents from any further rise in the flood level.
The house has a distinctly independent personality, yet also evokes strong feelings of a connection to the land. The levels of the platforms restate the multiple levels of the site, in a kind of poetic architectural rhyme, not unlike the horizontal balconies and rocks do at Wright's Fallingwater
Fallingwater
Fallingwater or Kaufmann Residence is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh...
. The house is anchored to the site in the cooling shadow of a large and majestic black maple tree. As Mies often did, the entrance is located on the sunny side, facing the river instead of the street, moving visitors around corners and revealing views of the house and site from various angles as they approach the front door. The simple elongated cubic form of the house is parallel to the flow of the river, and the terrace platform is slipped downstream in relation to the elevated porch and living platform. Outdoor living spaces are extensions of the indoor space, with a screened porch (screens now gone) and open terrace. Yet the man made always remains clearly distinct from the natural by its geometric forms, highlighted by the choice of white as its primary color.
Criticism
The building design received accolades in the architectural press, resulting in swarms of uninvited visitors trespassing on the property to glimpse this latest Mies building. But as a result of the accusations contained in Edith Farnsworth’s lawsuit, the house became a prop in the larger national social conflicts of the McCarthyMcCarthy
McCarthy may refer to:* McCarthy * McCarthy, Alaska* McCarthy , an indie pop band* MacCarthy , a Bordeaux wine* McCarthy Tétrault, a Canadian law firm...
era. The weekend house became a lightning rod for anti-modernist publications, exemplified in the April 1953 issue of House Beautiful
House Beautiful
House Beautiful is an interior decorating magazine that focuses on decorating and the domestic arts. First published in 1896, it is currently published by the Hearst Corporation, who purchased it in 1934...
, which attacked it as a communist inspired effort to supplant traditional American styles. Even Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
denounced the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
and International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
as un-American.
Large areas of glass wall, flat roofs, purging of ornament, and a perceived lack of traditional warmth and coziness were International Style features that were particular talking points of attack. Still, the Farnsworth House has continued to receive wide critical acclaim as a masterpiece of the modernist style, and Mies went on to receive the presidential Medal of Freedom for his contribution to American architecture and culture. Prominent architect and critic Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
was inspired by the design to build his own Glass House
Glass House
The Glass House or Johnson house, built in 1949 in New Canaan, Connecticut, was designed by Philip Johnson as his own residence and is a masterpiece in the use of glass. It was an important and influential project for Johnson and for modern architecture. The building is an essay in minimal...
in 1947. In the 21st century, Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning architectural critics Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City...
and Blair Kamin
Blair Kamin
Blair Kamin is the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, a post he has held since 1992. Kamin has held other jobs at the Tribune and previously worked for The Des Moines Register. He also serves as a contributing editor of Architectural Record...
have both declared the house a masterpiece of modern architecture. Its timeless quality is reflected by the reverent fascination in the minimalist house shown by a new generation of design professionals and enthusiasts.
See also
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Kendall County, Illinois
- Glass HouseGlass HouseThe Glass House or Johnson house, built in 1949 in New Canaan, Connecticut, was designed by Philip Johnson as his own residence and is a masterpiece in the use of glass. It was an important and influential project for Johnson and for modern architecture. The building is an essay in minimal...
External links
- Farnsworth House: Official site
- Farnsworth House Today: An in depth page from Columbia University, many diagrams and drawings.
- Het Glazen Huis te Geldrop: 1971 Dutch home based on the Farnsworth House, designed by H.G. Smelt.
- Photos of the Farnsworth House
- Edith Farnsworth Papers at the Newberry Library