Iconic Farnsworth House
The blueprint for Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Modernist masterpiece, Farnsworth House, was one of both groundbreaking architecture and tempestuous love,
Dr Edith Farnsworth, a kidney specialist, met Bauhaus master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – or “Mies” as he was known – at a dinner party in Chicago in 1945. The unattached Farnsworth was immediately fascinated by the architect and asked whether he knew anyone who could design her a weekender on some recently purchased land at Plano. Mies offered himself up as the man for the job.
The commission was soon in place, as was Farnsworth’s love for both Mies the man and his vision for a transparent, oneroom steel-and-glass house that would advance the “art” of architecture.
Set on the floodplain of the Fox River, south-west of Chicago, the house maximises the natural beauty of the setting, Mies designing an all-glass exterior separating a rectangular roof and a floor slab supported on eight white vertical beams suspended 1.5 metres above the ground. Farnsworth would later infamously refer to her house as a “glass cage on stilts”.
Despite their initial friendship, the relationship between architect and owner soured dramatically during construction, fuelled by cost blowouts and the impracticality of the house. Mies’ “less-ismore” approach and desire for aesthetic purity meant he neglected to include many of the basic necessities of life, such as storage space and closets, in the design.
The pair’s animosity only increased and they ended up in court, where Mies successfully sued Farnsworth for unpaid fees even though the house ultimately cost her much more than the original quote.
As the international fame of the house grew, so did the number of visitors. The doctor often had to deal with stickybeaks, who jumped fences for a closer look only to find Farnsworth coming out of the shower (which is contained in the central core).
Fed up, Farnsworth sold the house in 1972 to British architecture enthusiast Lord Peter Palumbo. Over the years, flooding by the Fox River, caused by expanded development upriver, damaged the building. Finally, at an auction at Sotheby’s in 2003, Farnsworth House was saved when the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Landmarks Illinois jointly purchased it for US$7.5million (about $10.9 million). It’s now a public museum.
Sounds like a movie script, right? Well, Farnsworth House is currently in preproduction, with Ralph Fiennes and Maggie Gyllenhaal in the lead roles. And while the story behind this iconic house may well deserve the Hollywood treatment, it’s the uncompromising simplicity of Mies’ creation that lingers in the memory.