“Less is more” is a phrase that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the German-American architect, academic, and interior designer, is often associated with . It is a principle that emphasizes the importance of simplicity and clarity in design. The phrase suggests that a minimalist approach to design can often be more effective than a more complex one .
What is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Famous For?
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) was a pioneering German-American architect known for his modernist philosophy and innovative use of materials. His notable works include the Barcelona Pavilion, Crown Hall, Farnsworth House, and more. Mies van der Rohe was the last director of the Bauhaus, a groundbreaking school of modernist art and design. He emigrated to the United States due to Nazi opposition to modernism and became the head of the architecture school at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).
14 Projects That Inspired By Mies
These architects, among many others, have been inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s modernist ideals and have incorporated elements of his style into their own works, creating a lasting architectural legacy influenced by his groundbreaking designs.
1- C-Glass House | Deegan Day Design (2014)
The design engages not only Philip Johnson’s Glass House and the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe (the client helped translate texts for Mies’ 1972 retrospective at MoMA), but also the California legacies of Elwood, Koenig and others. In contrast to earlier ‘vitrines in a garden,’ west coast glass houses bias towards the environment, employing tactics of framing, cantilever and directional enclosure to heighten, as well as quantify, the beauty of their surroundings. C-Glass House brokers between the Leica-like precision of high modern glass houses and the cinematic wideframe of the Case Study generation.
© Taiyo Watanabe
Plan 1
2- The Bear Stand | Bohlin Grauman Miller + Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (2015)
Nestled between the lake and an adjacent granite rock-face rising up to the south, the retreat serves as a jumping-off point to an expansive private trail network fashioned by the client. A series of delicate canoe docks and boardwalks knit shallow marshes with hilltop perches, urging exploration by both water and land. Vehicular access ends at the property, which backs onto government Crown Lands, creating a truly remote sensory experience.
The two-story residence stretches parallel to the lake and rock face, with primary living and dining spaces at ground level spilling to the outdoors, and sleeping and bathing spaces perched above to capture expansive views of the lake and surrounding forest. The two levels are connected by a glazed stair volume adjacent the hillside and anchored by a monolithic fireplace clad in locally sourced granite. Outdoor amenities such as a private sauna, ofuro soaking tub, hot tub, and screened porch allow immediate enjoyment of the surroundings within comfortable reach of the interior space.
© Nic Lehoux
Courtesy of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
3- Baulinder Haus | Hufft Projects (2012)
Baulinder Haus is characterized by its expansive cantilevers and bold finishes. The house’s form consists of a series of stacked boxes, with public spaces on the ground level and private spaces in the boxes above. The boxes are oriented in a U-shaped plan to create a generous private courtyard. The master suite overlooks this courtyard area, designed as an extension of the interior living space, blurring the boundaries between indoors and outdoors. Machiche and steel screening elements provide depth and texture to front facade.
Floor-to-ceiling south facing windows in the courtyard are shaded by the overhanging second floor above to prohibit solar heat gain, but allow for passive solar heating in the winter. Other sustainable elements of the home include a geothermal heat pump HVAC system, energy efficient windows and sprayed foam insulation. The exterior wood is a vertical shiplap siding milled from FSC certified Machiche. Baulinder Haus was designed to meet and exceed requirements put forward by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their Indoor airPLUS qualified homes, and is working toward Energy Star qualification.
© Andrew Fabin
Ground Floor Plan
4- Main Stay House | Matt Fajkus Architecture (2015)
Austin’s Bouldin Creek neighborhood provides a unique and ever-changing context to the Main Stay House. The challenges were both cultural and site-specific. The Main Stay House exists as a simple and straightforward proposal – an architectural experiment on domesticity – enabling lifestyle flexibility through clean forms, relatable materiality, and an urban infill living space that blurs the lines between inside and outside.
Paring down the components of a house to a minimal amount of planes and openings, the scheme is anchored by an obscured entry sequence and a staircase volume, both clad in iron spot masonry. These plans act as thresholds between the respective realms of public, common and private, by minimal means. The service core is consolidated along the east facade, allowing the structure to fully open up the living zone to the yard. The masonry also contrasts an otherwise muted interior atmosphere of smooth, desaturated surfaces.
© Allison Cartwright
Skecth
Plans
5- The Glass House | Philip Johnson (1949)
Inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, the Glass House by Philip Johnson, with its perfect proportions and its simplicity, is considered one of the first most brilliant works of modern architecture. Johnson built the 47-acre estate for himself in New Canaan, Connecticut. The house was the first of fourteen structures that the architect built on the property over a span of fifty years. the Glass House was the first design Johnson built on the property. The one-story house has a 32’x56′ open floor plan enclosed in 18-feet-wide floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass between black steel piers and stock H-beams that anchored the glass in place. The structure, however, did not impress Mies when he visited the house. It is said that the brilliant mentor to Philip Johnson stormed out in fury because of what he interpreted as a lack of thought in the details of the house.
Brick Guest House Plan
Library Plan
6- Brillhart House | Brillhart Architecture (2014)
This 1,500 sf house, which draws upon the American glass pavilion typology, Dog Trot, and principles of Florida Modernism, provides a tropical refuge in Downtown Miami. Elevated 5’ off the ground, the house includes 100 feet of uninterrupted glass – 50 feet spanning the length of the front and rear facades, with four sets of sliding glass doors that allow the house to be entirely open when desired. The house includes 800 sf of outdoor living space, with front and back porches and shuttered doors along the front for added privacy and protection against the elements. These details, and the position of the house, which is at the center of a 330-foot long lot, allow the house to meld seamlessly with the site’s dense and lush native landscaping.
Courtesy of Brillhart Architecture
Section 1
Section 2
7- Cabin at Longbranch | Olson Kundig (2003)
In the 1980s, the retreat consisted of three tiny pavilions linked by wooden platforms. In 2003, the pavilions were connected by a unifying roof, creating a single form grounded nto the hillside and projecting out over the landscape. The living room’s large wall of glass frames a view of the adjoining grassy field and Puget Sound, visually blending the indoors and outdoors. In 2014, a master bedroom and two guest rooms were added, creating a retreat of 2,400 square feet.
The cabin is intentionally subdued in color and texture, allowing the lush natural surroundings to take precedence. Simple, readily available materials are used: wood-framed walls are sheathed in plywood or recycled boards, inside and outside; doubled pairs of steel columns support beams that in turn support exposed roof structures. Interior spaces appear to flow seamlessly to the outside as materials continue from inside to out through invisible sheets of glass. Three mature fir trees have been accommodated within the design and allowed to grow through openings in the deck, one of them exiting through an opening in the roof.
© Kevin Scott
Main Level Floor Plan 2014
8- Cloaked House | 3r Ernesto Pereira (2017)
This project was clearly inspired by the place, a piece of land surrounded by chestnut trees, incredibly ripped into the mountain, flanked by a stream that flows down the hillside and a magnificent open view of the other side of the valley perfectly nestled into the natural landscape. It was this bucolic scenario that led to an enterprise that had no intention of imposing itself on the surrounding nature, but rather blending, hiding and transforming with it. It gave rise to the “Cloaked House” concept. This is how the house lands on the location and the “deviates” from the existing trees, emphasizing the lightness attitude and the conservation of the surrounding nature. The two blades – the roof and the floor – open onto the landscape and are punctuated whenever encountering a tree. This has resulted in patios that introduce dynamism and movement into a house marked by a well-defined rhythm of the wooden pillars, which support the garden-topped roof. The rest is transparency, glass, which is the only solution that makes sense in this scenario.
© João Morgado
Floor Plan
Section
9- Los Terrenos | Tatiana Bilbao (2016)
The landscape strategy aimed to respond and mimic the existing ora and fauna of the site in a designed aspect. The social area is on the rest level, within a mirrored glass envelope that simultaneously reflects and contains the lush surrounding; the main room overlooks the treetops; the other bedrooms are underground and built with clay and rammed earth in relation to the topography. The three program areas have a lattice that was designed to adapt according to different spatial connections and structural possibilities: it works as a solid and permeable door, screen partition, and structural wall, and as a semi-open wall that allows ventilation and sunlight bathing the interior spaces.
© Rory Gardiner
Social Area Plan, Section and Elevation
10- The House Of Secret Gardens | Spasm Design
This is a private home in Ahmedabad, is an expression in Dhrangadhra stone. The stone used in many of the architectural antiquities of Ahmedabad. The stone has a mottled texture and bone coloration, available in blocks; slabs and dust from quarries nearby it became an obvious choice. It ages pretty well too. The cellular structure of this sandstone holds intermittent microscopic air gaps, acting as an insulation panel itself. This led to the idea of cladding the entire body of the house as a monolith. The organization of the plan is like a simple cross. This allows for one room thick arms, hence permitting easy cross ventilation and the possibility of a seamless connection with the outdoors. The stone is used in giant blocks vertically to form a periphery, a border to the gardens to frame the edges, allow breezes, and a sense of containment and scale. This frame allows the home to be immersed in the greens, considered imagery and landscape will form the surrounds of the cross-shaped construct.
© Umang Shah
© Photographix
Ground Floor Plan
11- Hualle House – Ampuero Yutronic (2018)
Sitting on a gently sloping site in the rural foothills of the Villarrica volcano and the lake below, the house embraces this natural environment and the outstanding views afforded by its privileged setting. The two-storey building form and orientation is a response to this sloping terrain of the land and the microclimate of the area.
Building Form
Initially conceived as a simple rectangular volume, the design evolved through a series of manipulations and interventions to create the more sculptural form of the building:
1.Extending the building footprint on the south side, creating an irregular floor plan and volume;
2.Cut-out in the volume to signify the entrance;
3.Recess to the north facing glazing at ground level;
4.Roof geometry transformed into a series of folding planes.
Material and Construction Elements
The house is clad in vertical dark-stained softwood slats to resemble some of the buildings in the area that are clad in the black volcanic stone of the region. Dictated by the internal views to the outside landscape, the windows vary in size and position, creating a seemingly random composition on the building exterior.
© Felipe Fontecilla
Ground Floor Plan
Longitudinal Section
12- Residence in Colares | Frederico Valsassina Arquitectos (2013)
In the dense pine forest next to Praia das Maçãs (Apple Beach) the house hovers over the landscape.
We opt for a single volume with two distinct faces: a more closed one and another more exuberant and exposed. It marks the entrance in the blind elevation by a ramp that gently transports us to the interior of the house that in an unexpected way merges with the outside.Thus, all the environments set up a strong relation with the pinewood, the patio arises from this will and serves as a hinge between social and private area. In the room the space continuity is greater: two large planes of glass that run one over the other and open alternately to the porch. The few materials of the house create a unique atmosphere, the pavement inside and outside is the same – cement stroked – ensuring the unification of spaces.
The exterior porch due to its elevation relative to the terrain appears as a porch above the pine forest. If the house on one side is born from the land, on the other due to the natural topography delicately levitates on it. This solution appears in a way as a strategy of environmental comfort, the Sintra mountain range has a very high humidity level, with this solution decreases the transfer of moisture from the soil to the house.
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
13- Mi Casa | Studio+Valéria Gontijo (2017)
The house was distributed in three blocks: function, connect and dwell. Furthermore, the consistent application of concrete and wood created harmony, as this uniform materiality creates a sense of integration.
© Front Filmes
Floor Plan
14- Hofmann House | Fran Silvestre Arquitectos
Three elements make up the project. An extruded cover in the longitudinal direction of the ground with a “T” shape is the framework in which space is inhabited. This geometry let us feel the sea, protecting from prying eyes, having the sense of living without neighbors. It helps control the southern sun during summer and lets it pass in winter. The walkable roof becomes a sort of belvedere enjoying the entire surface of the plot.
© Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
First Floor Plan
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- © Alexandra Timpau
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- © Andrew Fabin
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- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona Pavilion, Barcelona, reconstructed in 1986. © Ashley Pomeroy.
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- © Marshell gerometta
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- Mies Van Der Rohe with the model of Crown Hall © workagile.co.uk
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- Farnsworth House in Plano, IL by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. © Jason R. Woods.
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- © Eric allix rogers
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- Library Plan
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- © Taiyo Watanabe
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- © Taiyo Watanabe
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- Plan 1
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- © Wikimedia Commons
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- © Alexandra Timpau
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- © Caroline stevens
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- Ground Floor Plan
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- © Nic Lehoux
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- Courtesy of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
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- Brick Guest House Plan
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- Floor Plan
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- Plans
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- © Allison Cartwright
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- © Rory Gardiner
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- © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
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- Skecth
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- Section 1
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- Section 2
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- Courtesy of Brillhart Architecture
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- Floor Plan 2003
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- Main Level Floor Plan 2014
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- © Kevin Scott
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- Floor Plan
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- Section
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- © João Morgado
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- Social Area Plan, Section and Elevation
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- Ground Floor Plan
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- © Umang Shah
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- © Photographix
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- © Felipe Fontecilla
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- Ground Floor Plan
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- Longitudinal Section
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- © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
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- © Front Filmes
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- Floor Plan
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- First Floor Plan
