Background: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( MEESS; German: [mi:s]; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886 - August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He is commonly referred to and was addressed as Mies, his surname.
Context: Between 1946 and 1951, Mies van der Rohe designed and built the Farnsworth House, a weekend retreat outside Chicago for an independent professional woman, Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Here, Mies explored the relationship between people, shelter, and nature. The glass pavilion is raised six feet above a floodplain next to the Fox River, surrounded by forest and rural prairies. The highly crafted pristine white structural frame and all-glass walls define a simple rectilinear interior space, allowing nature and light to envelop the interior space. A wood-panelled fireplace (also housing mechanical equipment, kitchen, and toilets) is positioned within the open space to suggest living, dining and sleeping spaces without using walls. No partitions touch the surrounding all-glass enclosure. Without solid exterior walls, full-height draperies on a perimeter track allow freedom to provide full or partial privacy when and where desired. The house has been described as sublime, a temple hovering between heaven and earth, a poem, a work of art. The Farnsworth House and its 60-acre (240,000 m2) wooded site was purchased at auction for US$7.5 million by preservation groups in 2004 and is now owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a public museum. The building influenced the creation of hundreds of modernist glass houses, most notably the Glass House by Philip Johnson, located near New York City and also now owned by the National Trust. The house is an embodiment of Mies' mature vision of modern architecture for the new technological age: a single unencumbered space within a minimal "skin and bones" framework, a clearly understandable arrangement of architectural parts. His ideas are stated with clarity and simplicity, using materials that are configured to express their own individual character.
Question: What got him interested in architecture?
Answer:

Background: Koenig was born in New York City, and is the son of Bobby Bass, a psychotherapist, and Robin Koenig, a set dresser on film and TV productions. His parents lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan before moving to Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He is Jewish, and his family came to the U.S. from Europe (including Romania and Hungary). He grew up in Northern New Jersey and attended Glen Ridge High School.
Context: In 2005, Ezra formed the alternative rock band Vampire Weekend. The name of the group was in reference to an unreleased indie film of the same name that Ezra and his friends produced during a vacation. In the film, Ezra portrayed protagonist, Walcott, a man hell-bent on escaping Cape Cod as he believed vampires were coming. Many songs from the bands eponymous release made reference to the film. Ezra met his bandmates at Columbia University, prior to 2003. After already having met drummer, Chris Tomson, Koenig became aquatinted with Rostam Batmanglij. The two immediately bonded over Radiohead at a party during freshman year and vowed to start a band one day. Rounding out the group was Chris Baio, Koenig's suite-mate in his sophomore year, and they shared a love of Destiny's Child. The group immediately got to work, playing their first show in 2006 at a battle of the bands in a campus basement. They placed third out of four. Later that year, some of their demos appeared online, earning raves from sites like Stereogum and Pitchfork. Before they knew it, they were selling out shows and appearing on the cover of Spin without even having released an album. Their eponymous debut album arrived in January 2008, and by the end of the year they had performed on Saturday Night Live, played for 40,000 fans at England's Glastonbury festival and sold nearly half a million albums. The album was self-produced whilst they were working full-time jobs. Since then, the band have released two additional albums, Contra and Modern Vampires of the City. The band has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards. In 2011, Contra was nominated for Best Alternative Album, however the band lost to The Black Keys. In 2014, Modern Vampires of the City won the Grammy award for Best Alternative Album. Following the win, Koenig exclaimed, "I'm the pre-eminent Ezra of my time, and when I die, then we can talk about who comes next." Following the departure of Batmanglij in 2016, Koenig is currently working on the band's fourth studio album, set for release in 2018.
Question: where did the band members meet?
Answer: Ezra met his bandmates at Columbia University,

Background: Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 - 7 July 2006) was an English singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and painter. Best known as a founder member of the band Pink Floyd, Barrett was the lead singer, guitarist and principal songwriter in its early years and is credited with naming the band. Barrett was excluded from Pink Floyd in April 1968 after David Gilmour took over as their new guitarist, and was briefly hospitalised amid speculation of mental illness. Barrett was musically active for less than ten years.
Context: The second album, Barrett, was recorded more sporadically than the first, with sessions taking place between February and July 1970. The album was produced by David Gilmour, and featured Gilmour on bass guitar, Richard Wright on keyboard and Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley. The first two songs attempted were for Barrett to play and/or sing to an existing backing track. However, Gilmour thought they were losing the "Barrett-ness". One track ("Rats") was originally recorded with Barrett on his own. That would later be overdubbed by musicians, despite the changing tempos. Shirley said of Barrett's playing: "He would never play the same tune twice. Sometimes Syd couldn't play anything that made sense; other times what he'd play was absolute magic." At times Barrett, who experienced synaesthesia, would say: "Perhaps we could make the middle darker and maybe the end a bit middle afternoonish. At the moment it's too windy and icy". These sessions were happening while Pink Floyd had just begun to work on Atom Heart Mother. On various occasions, Barrett went to "spy" on the band as they recorded their album. Wright said of the Barrett sessions: Doing Syd's record was interesting, but extremely difficult. Dave [Gilmour] and Roger did the first one (The Madcap Laughs) and Dave and myself did the second one. But by then it was just trying to help Syd any way we could, rather than worrying about getting the best guitar sound. You could forget about that! It was just going into the studio and trying to get him to sing.
Question: how was barrett received?
Answer:
Shirley said of Barrett's playing: "He would never play the same tune twice.