Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe - Educator

Educator

Mies played a significant role as an educator, believing his architectural language could be learned, then applied to design any type of modern building. He set up a new education at the department of architecture of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago replacing the traditional Ecole des Beaux-Art curriculum by a three-step-education beginning with crafts of drawing and construction leading to planning skills and finishing with theory of architecture (compare Vitruvius: firmitas, utilitas, venustas). He worked personally and intensively on prototype solutions, and then allowed his students, both in school and his office, to develop derivative solutions for specific projects under his guidance.

Some of Mies' curriculum is still put in practice in the first and second year programs at IIT, including the precise drafting of brick construction details so unpopular with aspiring student architects. When none were able to match the genius and poetic quality of his own work, he agonized about where his educational method had gone wrong. Nevertheless his achievements in creating a teachable architecture language that can be used to express the modern technological era survives until today.

Mies placed great importance on education of architects who could carry on his design principles. He devoted a great deal of time and effort leading the architecture program at IIT. Mies served on the initial Advisory Board of the Graham Foundation in Chicago. His own practice was based on intensive personal involvement in design efforts to create prototype solutions for building types (860 Lake Shore Drive, the Farnsworth House, Seagram Building, S. R. Crown Hall, The New National Gallery), then allowing his studio designers to develop derivative buildings under his supervision.

Mies's grandson Dirk Lohan and two partners led the firm after he died in 1969. Lohan, who had collaborated with Mies on the New National Gallery, continued with existing projects but soon led the firm on his own independent path. Other disciples continued Mies's architectural language for years, notably Gene Summers, David Haid, Myron Goldsmith, Jacques Brownson, and other architects at the firms of C.F. Murphy and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

But while Mies' work had enormous influence and critical recognition, his approach failed to sustain a creative force as a style after his death and was eclipsed by the new wave of Post Modernism by the 1980s. Proponents of the Post Modern style attacked the Modernism with clever statements such as "less is a bore" and with captivating images such as Crown Hall sinking in Lake Michigan. Mies had hoped his architecture would serve as a universal model that could be easily imitated, but the aesthetic power of his best buildings proved impossible to match, instead resulting mostly in drab and uninspired structures rejected by the general public. The failure of his followers to meet his high standard may have contributed to demise of Modernism and the rise of new competing design theories following his death.