Case Study: The Farnsworth House By Mies Van Der Rohe
Sarah Garba
How did Mies’ Farnsworth House prototype a new future of living using glass walls?
[Fig.1] Elevation perspective of The Farnsworth House, featuring kitchen, bedroom and living room photographed by Rich Stapleton
An elevated harmony of steel, glass, and concrete sits close to the banks of the Red River in the countryside of Plano, Illinois. A white-coated steel structure features a grid-like arrangement of transparent curtain walls that seemingly distil the landscape into the interior itself. Designed by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe in 1948 and built in 1951, the Farnsworth House offers a theoretical examination into the lived environment and challenges the traditional conventions of the ‘wall’. Intended as a weekend retreat for Dr. Edith Farnsworth, Mies harnessed the technological advancements of glass to propose a new way of experiencing space through the organisation of spatial elements, eliciting new encounters with the exterior. To propose such a bold creation Mies developed his own philosophy to interpret his experiments, which took the standard living condition of rooms within rooms, into a new and open interpretation. In doing so Mies was able to withdraw from the homologous suburban architecture to become a figure head in the landscape of modernist iconography.
This essay will analyse the historical context of the Farnsworth House, focusing on the inherent qualities of interior design and how they were refined using glass walls, to explore a new possible future of living and seeing. Interweaving Mies’ philosophy of space and his minimalist approach, I consider how glass came to be an emblem of modernity, its perceived image as a utopic fantasy through time and how it afforded new visions of seeing, connecting, and reflecting in space.