Farnsworth House

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Farnsworth House
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark
Farnsworth House in 2008

Farnsworth House in 2008

Farnsworth House (Illinois)
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location Plano , Kendall County , Illinois
Coordinates 41 ° 38 '6 "  N , 88 ° 32' 9.6"  W Coordinates: 41 ° 38 '6 "  N , 88 ° 32' 9.6"  W.
surface 140 m²
Built 1950-51
architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Architectural style Modern
NRHP number 04000867
Data
The NRHP added October 7, 2004
Declared as an  NHL February 17, 2006

The Farnsworth House is a country house south of the city Plano in Illinois , the Mies van der Rohe has 1945-1951 designed and built.

history

In 1945 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was commissioned by Edith Farnsworth, a wealthy Chicago doctor, to design a weekend house where she could retreat to relax and pursue her hobbies. Mies van der Rohe went through an enormous planning effort and needed thousands of hours of work for this building within three years. The building was built in 1950/1951 and is now a well-known building of modern architecture .

Edith Farnsworth ultimately rejected the purism of her house. In the legal disputes about the construction costs and the "uninhabitability" of the weekend house, she expressed herself as follows:

“The house is transparent like an X-ray. I wanted something "meaningful," and all I got was that slick nibbless. We know that less is no more. It's just less. .… The glass and steel construction is uninhabitable. ... Mies speaks of open space, but the space is very fixed. I can't even hang a coat hanger around the house without wondering how that changes the outside look. ... Every change of furniture becomes a problem. "

- Edith Farnsworth

Even so, Farnsworth used the house for 21 years.

In 1972 the building was sold by Edith Farnsworth and after restoration by a grandson of Mies van der Rohe it was open to the public. Today it is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation , following an auction that raised $ 6.7 million . On October 7, 2004, Farnsworth House was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a monument . It has been a National Historic Landmark since February 17, 2006 .

description

inner space

The Farnsworth House , a single-room house, located on a 3.9 hectare meadow land and decreases with input an area of 8.85 to 23.45 meters one. The building is raised about 1.6 m from the ground, probably not least to withstand the floods of the nearby Fox River . The increase can just as well be interpreted as a volumetric inversion of a classic base. In addition to a living room, Farnsworth House consists of a loggia and a slightly lower terrace. Stairs with relatively little incline connect the individual levels with one another.

The interior space is around 140 m² and apart from a block in the middle with the necessary installations such as kitchenette, bathroom, etc., it is free of construction and partition walls. Only one wall of this box is led to the ceiling to guide the necessary installation lines.

The outer walls are completely made of glass and allow a direct reference to nature in every situation, only light curtains made of silk are provided as privacy screens. Although no air conditioning was provided, the house only has two small, raised windows. Also, there is only one door that leads outside.

architecture

Park view

The Farnsworth House is "virtually nothing" der Rohe aloud Mies van. The main elements are the horizontal, which is made clear by their massive design as well as the indented steel supports. In addition, the transparent vertical surfaces give the viewer the impression of floating, because for reasons of flood protection, the house is built on girders 1.6 meters above the ground. The ceilings consist of steel frames, which together with the steel supports (double T-beams) form the self-supporting steel skeleton construction. The frames are filled with concrete slabs. The facade, made of large glass panes, is attached to the load-bearing external supports with angles.

Viewed as a whole, the reduced, simple design expresses the principle of less is more (“less is more”), which was coined by Mies van der Rohes . Mies van der Rohe was of the opinion that everything non-essential should be left out of architecture, and he himself said:

This home is far more important than its size or cost would suggest. It is a prototype for all glass structures.

Trivia

The toy manufacturer Lego has sold the Farnsworth House along with other architecture icons as part of its Architecture series as a 546-piece model.

literature

  • Sydney LeBlanc: Modern Architecture in America. A guide to the buildings of the 20th century. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-421-03136-3 .
  • Werner Nehls: Farnsworth House - Looking Back at an Icon , Grin Publishing 2013, ISBN 978-3656424642 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Farnsworth House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Werner Nehls: Farnsworth House - Review of an Icon , Grin Publishing 2013, ISBN 978-3656424642 .
  2. ^ Farnsworth House in the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed August 11, 2017.
  3. Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Illinois. National Park Service , accessed July 22, 2019.
  4. Archive link ( Memento of the original from February 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on March 4, 2011. "The house faces the Fox River just to the south and is raised 5 feet 3 inches above the ground."  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.farnsworthhouse.org
  5. LeBlanc: Modern Architecture in America
  6. Lego Shop Archive "Farnsworth House"