Tati Back: Designers you should know: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) was a German-American architect. He was widely acknowledged as one of the 20^th century’s greatest architects. In 1956, famed architect Eero Saarinen spoke at the dedication of Mies' masterwork and lauded him as Chicago's third great artist, placing Mies in the prestigious lineage of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. "Great architecture is both universal and individual," Saarinen said at the dedication, "The universality comes because there is an architecture expressive of its time. But the individuality comes as the expression of one man's unique combination of faith and honesty and devotion and belief in architecture."

Mies served as the last director of Bauhaus, a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. He then came to The U.S. where he headed the department of architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology. As a professional he sought to make use of modern materials such as steel and glass and to create simple and minimal lines which he believed represented the industrial era.

Nowadays, we can still see and admire his work in architecture and furniture designs around the world, always remembering his famous saying that less is more as we reduce the distractions and focus on the essential elements.