Atlas Trail
Steel, Glass, and Almost Nothing Else: The Buildings of Mies van der Rohe
From a rebuilt exhibition hall in Barcelona to a glass box on the Illinois prairie to a bronze tower on Park Avenue, seven buildings trace one architect's fifty-year pursuit of a single idea: that a structure could be reduced to its frame, its skin, and the light passing through both.
Stop 1 of 9.
Artists
Start with the man: a stonemason's son who apprenticed his way into architecture and adopted his mother's name on the way up.
Stop 2 of 9.
Works
The Barcelona Pavilion, 1929: a building with nothing in it but water, a bronze figure, and planes of stone and glass. Designed with Lilly Reich.
Stop 3 of 9.
Artists
Meet Lilly Reich, the partner the Pavilion and its chair went decades without properly crediting.
Stop 4 of 9.
Works
Villa Tugendhat, 1930: the free plan built for a family, now the only work of modern architecture on the Czech Republic's UNESCO list.
Stop 5 of 9.
Works
After emigrating to the United States: the Farnsworth House, a glass box on eight steel legs above a river, and a lawsuit that ended a friendship.
Stop 6 of 9.
Works
860-880 Lake Shore Drive: the same idea, scaled up to a pair of Chicago apartment towers.
Stop 7 of 9.
Works
The Seagram Building: a 27-year-old client's daughter picked Mies, and his plaza reshaped how American cities zone skyscrapers.
Stop 8 of 9.
Works
S. R. Crown Hall, his own architecture school: the building Mies called the clearest expression of his philosophy.
Stop 9 of 9.
Works
End in Berlin: the Neue Nationalgalerie, opened in 1968, his last building and his return to the city that once forced his school to close.
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