Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was perhaps the most influential architect of the mid-20th-Century.

    Mies was born in Aachen, Germany, on March 27, 1886. At age 19, he moved to Berlin, where he worked for architect and furniture designer Bruno Paul, and later for industrial architect Peter Behrens.  Mies opened his own office in Berlin in 1912.
 

    Even in his early years, Mies produced models of skyscrapers with steel frames and glass walls, foreshadowing a style that would become his greatest legacy.  
 

    In his most famous early work, the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona Exhibition, he created a long, low  glass-walled building in which the interior was a series of free-flowing spaces with minimal walls--

 He also designed the familiar chrome and leather Barcelona chair for the pavilion.

   Mies was director of the Bauhaus School of Design, the major center of 20th-century architectural modernism, from 1930 until 1933.  He moved to the United States in 1937, where, as director of architecture for two decades at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, he trained a new generation of American architects.

    In addition to 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, Mies produced a number of famous buildings in the United States, including:
 

 The Seagram Building in New York City (built in 1958 in collaboration with the American architect Philip Johnson), an elegant 37-story bronze-and-glass structure; and
 

 Farnsworth House (built in 1950, in Plano, Illinois), a glass-walled structure considered by many to be the best example of his residential architecture design.

    Mies's phrase "less is more" became the essence of mid-20th-century architecture.  His skyscraper designs have been copied or adapted by architects throughout the world.

    He died in Chicago on August 17, 1969.
 

    If you'd like to learn more about Mies van der Rohe, the author of this website recommends reading Mies van der Rohe: a critical biography (1985, by Franz Schulze).

Here's an extensive bibliography.

Looking for Mies van der Rohe links on the Web?  Click here.

Check out this cool site if you have an interest in high-rise buildings and tall structures in general.