Seagram Building New York - e-architect Home > New York > Seagram Building New York Seagram Building New York Published by Adrian Welch updated on July 6, 2016 Seagram Building, New York Tower, Architect, Date, Address, Wells Fargo Manhattan Skyscraper, Design Seagram Building New York Wells Fargo Manhattan Tower, USA : Key 20th Century Skyscraper in the United States 6 + 5 Jul 2016 Seagram Building New York City Seagram Building in New York City Wells Fargo office building on Park Avenue images from 24 Jun – 2 Jul 2016 © Adrian Welch: Seagram building at night: Location: 375 Park Avenue, New York, NY, USA Date: 1954-58 Design: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect; Philip Johnson Classic International Style design – this building exhibits clean Modernist lines. The Seagram Building faces the podium and tower of Lever House by architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill across Park Avenue. Both buildings feature in most histories of 20th Century architecture.

This well-respected skyscraper located between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. It was the world’s most expensive skyscraper upon completion. The tower is 515 feet (157 m) high. It has 38 stories. The building is made from a steel structure with non-structural glass walls hung off it. Cladding and interior materials include bronze, marble and travertine. To preserve a semblance of order externally the window blinds were designed to operate in only three positions: open, halfway open, or closed. Philip Johnson became an associate for architect Mies van der Rohe on the Seagram Building in 1955: he worked on interiors such as the Four Seasons Restaurant. Seagram Building, New York City New York City 5 34 votes Built as the corporate headquarters for Canadian distillers Joseph E. Seagram and Sons, the innovative Seagram Building set the stage for the design of New York skyscrapers for many years to come. Situated on New York's famed Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street, the Seagram Building was a pioneer in its time.

Designed by well-known German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in collaboration with American Philip Johnson, this building was to become a model for the next forty years of NYC skyscrapers. Architecture Most skyscrapers in the 1950s and prior had a decorated facade built around a structural frame. However, van der Rohe was hoping for a different look. He wanted the building's structural elements to be visible. Unfortunately, building codes forbid that, demanding that all structural steel be covered with some sort of fireproofing material, usually concrete. So, instead, the architect used non-structural, bronze-toned I-beams to suggest structure to those viewing the 38-story, 516-foot (157m) skyscraper from the outside. These beams are visible from the outside of the building, and run vertically like mullions in the large glass windows. Mies van der Rohe was also quite concerned that the building look uniform to those viewing it from the outside. Because of that, he only installed window blinds that sat at three levels: fully open, half open, and fully closed - allowing for a more consistent look.

Masterpiece The Seagram building fulfilled Mies van der Rohe's functional architecture philosophy of 'less is more'. It is considered by many, including van der Rohe himself, as his masterpiece. An Expensive Building Seagram spared no expense in the building of this particular skyscraper. It is said that 3.2 million pounds of bronze was used in its construction and the liberal use of materials like marble and travertine also caused building costs to escalate. It was the most expensive skyscraper of its time, costing a total of $41 million including the $5 million cost of the building parcel. The Plaza One of the innovations of the Seagram building was the addition of its open granite plaza in front of the skyscraper which was a different way of tackling the zoning regulations of 1916. The plaza became a popular gathering place during the Seagram Building's early years. Because of that, New York City passed a zoning resolution in 1961 in an attempt to entice builders to install "privately owned public spaces" like the one at the Seagram's Building.

AD Classics: Seagram Building / Mies van der Rohe | ArchDaily AD Classics: Seagram Building / Mies van der Rohe AD Classics: Seagram Building / Mies van der Rohe 01:00 - 10 May, 2010 Save this picture! Courtesy of 375parkavenue.com From the architect. Located in the heart of New York City, the Seagram Building designed by Mies van der Rohe epitomizes elegance and the principles of modernism. The 38-story building on Park Avenue was Mies' first attempt at tall office building construction. Save this picture! Mies' response to the city with the Seagram Building was the grand gesture of setting back the building 100 feet from the street edge, which created a highly active open plaza. The plaza attracts users with its two large fountains surrounded by generous outdoor seating. By making this move, Mies distanced himself from New York urban morphology, lot line development, and the conventional economics of skyscraper construction. Save this picture! Lobby floor plan The plaza also created a procession to the entry of the building, providing the threshold that linked the city with the skyscraper.

This threshold continues into the building as a horizontal plane in the plaza that cuts into the lobby. The lobby also has a white ceiling that stretches out over the entry doors further eroding the defined line between interior and exterior. Save this picture! The office spaces above the lobby, furnished by Philip Johnson, have flexible floor plans lit with luminous ceiling panels. These floors also get maximum natural lighting with the exterior being glass panes of gray topaz that provide floor-to-ceiling windows for the office spaces. The gray topaz glass was used for sun and heat protection, and although there are Venetian blinds for window coverings they could only be fixed in a limited number of positions so as to provide visual consistency from the outside. Save this picture! Courtesy of 375parkavenue.com The detailing of the exterior surface was carefully determined by the desired exterior expression Mies wanted to achieve. The metal bronze skin that is seen in the facade is nonstructural but is used to express the idea of the structural frame that is underneath.

New York Architecture Photos: Seagram Building Manhattan 1958 , 375 Park Avenue , commercial , International Style , Kahn & Jacobs , landmark , Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , Manhattan , midtown , New York City , Philip Johnson . After half a century, the elegant, glowing bronze Seagram Building on Park Avenue remains a landmark in several realms: New York City, structural engineering, architectural style, corporate identity, personal achievement and more. New York City’s Landmark Preservation Commission bestowed landmark status on October 3, 1989, recognizing the structure as an architectural treasure. In terms of structural engineering, the steel-and-concrete dual framing system was the first of its kind for a tall building, and the first tall building to use high-strength bolts (instead of rivets). The architectural style – International Style – had become the mode for new office buildings.

(Though New York’s first curtain wall structure following Mies van der Rohe’s principles – Lever House – stood across the street.) To achieve the purity of the design, Seagram president Samuel Bronfman purchased enough land to create a large plaza (avoiding the typical wedding cake setbacks of other tall buildings) and budgeted for a lavish bronze and glass curtain wall. The 38-story tower is Mies van der Rohe’s only New York project – but it is considered his finest. The Seagram Building’s bronze glow is achieved through tinted glass, backed by ceiling light panels all around. Mies even dictated three-position (fully open, half open, fully closed) window blinds with slats fixed at 45 degrees, to ensure a uniform appearance. As Mies would say, “God is in the details.” The building’s owners change the plaza sculptures periodically, and provide occasional concerts.

Seagram Building Vital Statistics Location: 375 Park Avenue between E 52nd and E 53rd Streets Year completed: 1958 Architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, design architects with Kahn & Jacobs, associate architects Floors: 38 ‘Building Seagram,’ Phyllis Lambert’s New Architecture Book - The New York Times The New York Times Art & Design |A Personal Stamp on the Skyline Search A Personal Stamp on the Skyline By MARK LAMSTER Continue reading the main story “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Tapping a shaft of white marble in the lobby of the Seagram Building, the bespoke modern tower she willed into being more than 50 years ago, Phyllis Lambert was as close to wistful as her rather unsentimental constitution would allow. “I consider I was born when I built this building,” she said. Designed by the architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, the Seagram Building was an instant classic upon its 1959 dedication and was once described by the critic Herbert Muschamp in The New York Times as “the millennium’s most important building.” Ms.

Lambert’s book, “ Building Seagram ,” being released next week by the Yale University Press, is something of a joint biography: a history of this stately Park Avenue landmark that many consider the pinnacle of postwar architecture in New York, rendered through the lens of her vivid memories of its invention and of her privileged early years as the daughter of the liquor baron Samuel Bronfman, who founded the Seagram distilling empire. The book reveals many new details about a building that remains among the most studied of the modern era. Though it now seems an implacable and timeless monument, a bronzed monolith standing resolutely behind its well-proportioned plaza, the tower’s existence was by no means ordained. In June 1953 Ms. Lambert was a 26-year-old recently divorced sculptor living in Paris, a self-imposed exile from her native Montreal and from her domineering father. Photo The New York landmark, on Park Avenue at 52nd Street, in 1958, not long before its dedication.

Credit Ezra Stoller/Esto, Canadian Center For Architecture It was then that she reeled off a missive to her father, a response to his own letter outlining plans for a New York skyscraper. She was not impressed with the undistinguished modern box his architects proposed and let him know: “This letter starts with one word repeated very emphatically,” she wrote, “NO NO NO NO NO.” Continue reading the main story Seven more pages followed, in which Ms. Lambert alternately scolded, cajoled and lectured her father on architectural history and civic responsibility. There was “nothing whatsoever commendable” in the proposed design, she wrote. “You must put up a building which expresses the best of the society in which you live, and at the same time your hopes for the betterment of this society.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Sitting at a corner table in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons, the Seagram Building restaurant that inspired the phrase “power lunch,” Ms. Lambert, still unyielding at 86, laughed with unguarded pleasure at the nerve she demonstrated 60 years ago. “When I read it now I think, ‘Wow, it’s amazing,’ ” she said of her letter.

“I was thinking the whole thing through as I wrote.” Her father was impressed enough by her passion to invite her back from Paris, thinking she could, as she writes, “choose the marble for the ground floor,” a task he thought would assuage her. But Ms. Lambert was not content to play a subservient role. “When I come to the U.S. it will be to do a job and not to sit around the St. Regis making sweet talk,” she wrote to her mother, Saidye. She got her chance and eventually won the title director of planning for the project, along with a $20,000 salary. Determined to choose an architect who would “make the greatest contribution to architecture,” she recalled, she was referred to Philip Johnson, who was leaving his post as director of the architecture department at the Museum of Modern Art to devote himself fully to his fledgling architectural practice. Photo Phyllis Lambert persuaded her father to make his Seagram Building a paragon of modern architecture in the 1950s. Credit Marcus Yam for The New York Times Together they made a shortlist of candidates.

In one memorable afternoon they sorted the contenders with Eero Saarinen in the living room of Johnson’s Glass House, in New Canaan, Conn., now a landmark but then still new. Saarinen later tossed himself into the mix, proposing a tower similar to the one he would deliver to CBS for a site just a few blocks away. He was rejected, as were Marcel Breuer, Pietro Belluschi, Walter Gropius, Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, I. M. Pei and Minoru Yamasaki. One prominent architect Ms. Lambert did not have to worry about was Frank Lloyd Wright. He had already put himself forward for the job (among his proposals was a 100-story tower) only to be dismissed by Seagram executives as ungovernable. That left two options: Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French modernist, and Mies, who had moved to Chicago from Germany in 1938. Ms. Lambert chose Mies, whose career Johnson had championed for decades. Mies, in turn, made Johnson a partner, and put him in charge of much of the interior work. “Mies forces you in,” Ms.

Lambert wrote in October 1954. “You might think this austere strength, this ugly beauty, is terribly severe. It is, and yet all the more beauty in it.” That severity represented an aesthetic about-face for the Seagram company, then with headquarters in the flamboyant Art Deco Chrysler Building. One of Ms. Lambert’s more amusing revelations in the book is that Seagram’s offices there were designed by a young Morris Lapidus, future maestro of Miami kitsch. Mies and Johnson were in some respects unlikely architects for the Jewish Bronfman family, in that both had checkered histories during the 1930s. While Mies had been apolitically opportunistic in Germany, Johnson was a fascist and anti-Semite. The Bronfman family had its own past to contend with. “The fortune was started or hugely advanced by the sale of liquor into the United States during Prohibition,” said Daniel Okrent, author of “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.” Ms.

Lambert is somewhat evasive on that subject, but she writes that the “stigma” of that past was on the minds of Seagram executives, who were concerned that they might have trouble finding renters for a building owned and occupied by a liquor company. Photo Mies van der Rohe, center, touring the Seagram Building with its building committee in 1956. Phyllis Lambert, whose father founded the Seagram’s empire, has written a new book about the creation of this monument to modernism, in which she played a pivotal role. Credit Frank Scherschel/Getty Images But first they had to build it, a task that required all the backbone Ms. Lambert revealed in her initial letter to her father. That meant, in May 1955, staring down a conference room packed with some 30 builders, all men, who questioned the feasibility of Mies’s plans. “I only had one thing in mind, and that was making sure Mies built the building he wanted to,” she said.

“When you’re young, you’re very clear about what’s right and what’s wrong.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story She was uncompromising in her defense of Mies’s vision, even after he returned to Chicago when New York State authorities claimed that he lacked the proper qualifications to practice architecture. When a contractor tried to dissuade her from using an expensive brick bonding technique because it would be hidden from view, she channeled the aphoristic Mies, countering, “God would know.” (The building’s structural integrity, in any case, was assured by its chief engineer, Fred Severud, who was later an author of a cold-war primer on safety titled “The Bomb, Survival, and You.”) Carol Willis, the founding director of the Skyscraper Museum in New York, said the Seagram Building gave “a modernist corporate identity to a city that was changing from stone to glass.” That transformation did not come cheaply. While Mies averred “Less is more,” that was not a philosophy he applied to the budget.

The highly customized building cost about $36 million, an astronomical sum at the time, and then incurred what was effectively a luxury tax from the state, an imposition that became the subject of a protracted legal fight. In a 1964 editorial, The Times described this “tax on architectural excellence” as nothing less than a “catastrophe.” There were other frustrations. In 1958 Ms. Lambert commissioned Mark Rothko to create a series of murals for the Four Seasons. He began work but backed out and then vented to a reporter that he had only accepted the job with “malicious intent,” so he could make paintings so disagreeable as to spoil the appetites of the restaurant’s fat-cat patrons. (The episode became the subject of the Broadway play “Red.”) Ms. Lambert puts little stock in Rothko’s rant. “He had this religious feeling about his work,” she said, and simply didn’t want it hanging where it would serve merely as decoration. “I kind of understood his point.” Photo Ms. Lambert with Philip Johnson, left, and Mies van der Rohe in 1955. Credit United Press International/Canadian Center For Architecture Other artists Ms.

Lambert tried to enlist were Brancusi and Picasso. Brancusi treated her to Champagne in his Paris studio, where he kept a gong over his bed. Nothing came of the visit. She recruited Picasso to create a suite of sculptures for the Four Seasons. She met him for lunch at his studio in Cannes, and he charmed her by forming animal shapes from pieces of bread. But the meeting came to nothing, a failure Ms. Lambert, who had sharp features and bright eyes, attributed to the jealousy of Picasso’s lover Jacqueline Roque. “That was what we all assumed,” she said. “I was a very pretty young lady.” She did get her Picasso, however. “Le Tricorne,” a stage curtain he created in 1919 for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, has been a Four Seasons signature since the restaurant opened in 1959. Ms. Lambert purchased it from an independent dealer for $50,000. Even as ownership has passed from the Bronfman family’s control, Ms. Lambert has watched over the building.

A set of design standards established in 1979 as part of a complex lease-back agreement stipulated everything from the positioning of venetian blinds to the continued “policy of genial permissiveness” regulating its landmark plaza. “It has to be maintained properly, and that’s a lesson I hope people have learned,” she said. The building became a New York City landmark in 1989. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ms. Lambert later became an architect herself, studying under Mies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1979 she founded the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, where she lives in a historic building with two bouviers des Flandres. Her singular devotion to architecture inspired a 2007 documentary, “ Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture .” “When she got the Seagram Building built, it was the first time you really realized that architecture brought something to the city that didn’t exist,” said the architect Ricardo Scofidio, a partner in the firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro, which redesigned the Brasserie, the Seagram’s less rarefied restaurant, in 2000.

“It really turned the city around, and for architects it suddenly raised their status in the eyes of clients.” Musing on her accomplishments between bites of tuna tartare Ms. Lambert betrayed a clear sense of satisfaction. “You come down the street and you see this building and it’s just fantastic,” she said. “I was just so passionate about what had to be done.” A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 2013, on Page AR23 of the New York edition with the headline: A Personal Stamp on the Skyline. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe International Style II construction The plan of the building is based on a 8.50 m grid, pursued to unprecedented Miesian accuracy. The elevator core is placed to the back of the building, forming the protruding, windowless back wall of the tower. Set on bronze-clad pillars, the 38-storey facade consists of alternating bands of bronze plating and "whisky brown"-tinted glass (the material and colour choices were a result of Bronfman's insistance of having a warmer-toned facade than in the Lake Shore Drive Apts).

The building was, notably, the first with floor-to-ceiling windows, making the wall a true curtain of glass, as foreseen by the visionaries of Modern Movement, like Mies himself. Between the windows, there are vertical decorative bronze I-profiled beams attached to the mullions to emphasize the vertical rise of the facade. Van der Rohe personally stated that this was his only building in the United States which met exactly his European standards. type The fame of the Lever House in the 1950s was matched by the Seagram Building in the 1960s. This steel skeleton framed skyscraper, headquarters of the Seagram Liquor Company, established the basic form of the corporate tower for years to come. Like Lever House, the curtain wall tower is not built to the edge of the site. It occupies only 40 percent of the allowable zoning envelope, freeing up space for a granite-paved public plaza enhanced by two reflecting pools and marble benches that is widely regarded as one of the most successful in the city. The plaza is an expensive aesthetic and symbolic gesture, especially significant in the dense urban environment which surrounds it.

Designed by a famous European architect who immigrated to the United States at the beginning of World War II, this building epitomizes the importation of modernist ideals from Europe to the United States. In its monumental simplicity, expressed structural frame and rational use of repeated building elements, the building embodies Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's oft-repeated aphorisms that "structure is spiritual" and "less is more." He believed that the more a building was pared to its essential structural and functional elements, and the less superfluous imagery is used, the more a building expresses its structure and form. Following these premises, the Seagram Building is meant to confirm Mies' assertion that when modern industrialized building technology is truthfully expressed, architecture becomes transcendent. Ironically, the luxurious materials used (marble for the plaza benches, travertine for the lobby walls and floor, tinted glass and bronze for the curtain wall) and the carefully controlled customized details that pervade the building remind the viewer that this building is far from being the simple result of rationalized industrial production and construction techniques. Additionally, Mies' selective exposure of the function or non-function of various architectural elements is based on illusionism.

The building is, in a sense, a structural fiction rather then an honest expression. Much copied but not matched, the Seagram Building is generally recognized as the finest example of skyscrapers in the International Style. Much of the building's success comes from its elegant proportions, and its relation to the overall site: the building is set back from the street by ninety feet, and in from the side by thirty. The forecourt so created uses reflecting pools and a low boundary wall in green marble to set off the building, borrowing heavily from Mies' earlier Pavilion in Barcelona (1929). The building's external faces are given their character by the quality of the materials used - the tinted glass and the bronze 'I-beams' applied all the way up the building. The Seagram Building is the first bronze-colored skyscraper. Mies had first used similar applied I-beams (but in steel) at his 1951 apartment towers at Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, welded to the outside of the structural columns. 'His purported aim was the stiffening of the frame of each bay, but more important was the creation of a surface texture that relieved the potential monotony of a smooth facade, while emphasizing the verticality of the overall form.

The architect later explained that he had used the device primarily because, without it, the building simply "did not look right." Carter Wiseman in Shaping a Nation, 1998 In this Mies was, in the most subtle way, adding ornament to his building, for which he was criticized by the Modernist purists. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to visit The building is on the east side of Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets. It is open to the public, with public spaces inside including the Four Seasons Restaurant (designed by Philip Johnson) and the Seagram Gallery on the Fourth Floor. Tours are conducted weekly, at 3 p.m. on Tuesdays. For further information and opening times call +1 212 572 7000. Subway: 6 to 51st Street; E or F to Lexington Avenue. Bus: M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M101, M102 to 52nd Street.

Parking: On-site lot Seagram Building | building, New York City, New York, United States | Britannica.com building, New York City, New York, United States Written By: Statue of Liberty Seagram Building, high-rise office building in New York City (1958). Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson , this sleek Park Avenue skyscraper is a pure example of a rectilinear prism sheathed in glass and bronze . It took the International Style to its zenith. Despite its austere and forthright use of the most modern materials, it demonstrates Mies’s exceptional sense of proportion and concern for detail. The Seagram Building, New York City, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, 1956–58. Photo Media, Ltd. International Style (architecture) architectural style that developed in Europe and the United States in the 1920s and ’30s and became the dominant tendency in Western architecture during the middle decades of the 20th century. The most common characteristics of International Style buildings are rectilinear forms; light, taut... 4 References found in Britannica Articles Assorted References Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article!

Contact our editors with your feedback. MEDIA FOR: You have successfully emailed this. Error when sending the email. Try again later. Edit Mode Building, New York City, New York, United States Tips for Editing Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are the best.) Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Submit Thank You for Your Contribution! Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article.

Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Uh Oh There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Close Date Published: September 27, 2013 URL: Access Date: January 20, 2017 Share Mies van der Rohe Society | Projects Mies van der Rohe Society Minerals and Metals Building Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA Formerly the Armour Research Foundation (ARF) Metals Building, the opening of what is now called the Minerals and Metals Building marked the first step toward the realization of Mies' master plan for the Illinois Institute of Technology's Main Campus. Not only was it the first building Mies designed for IIT, ... › View Project 1956 Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA S.R. Crown Hall is, by all accounts, a masterpiece. Since its completion over 50 years ago, Mies van der Rohe’s “home for ideas and adventures” has inspired students, architects, and admirers. The project to build a new home for the School of Architecture and Institute of Design came about more ...

› View Project 1952 Robert F. Carr Memorial Chapel of St. Savior Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA “Too often we think about architecture in terms of the spectacular. There is nothing spectacular about this chapel; it was not meant to be spectacular. It was meant to be simple; and, in fact, it is simple. But in its simplicity it is not primitive, but noble, and in its ... › View Project 1951 860-880 Lake Shore Apartments 860 - 880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL, USA About the buildings. The materials are common: steel, aluminum, glass. Yet these buildings are renowned for their structural clarity and composition. Using steel straight from the mill, Mies built with the eye and intent of an artist, striking the perfect balance between rational structure and irrational spirit. The vertical windows ...

› View Project 1946 Wishnick Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA “We’ve got to expand our idea of what constitutes beauty from a technical point of view.” —Peter Land, IIT Professor of Architecture, in regard to the importance of restoring Wishnick Hall Wishnick Hall, originally called Chemistry Building, was Mies' fifth structure on the IIT campus. According to Franz Schulze, Mies' ... › View Project 1958 Illinois Institute of Technology Master Plan Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA Mies arrived in Chicago in 1938 to become the Director of Architecture at the Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) with the understanding that he would redevelop the curriculum. Soon after, he was awarded the commission to redesign the campus and its buildings, an unexpected opportunity to shape a ... › View Project 1970 One IBM Plaza 330 North Wabash Street , Chicago, IL, USA It’s hard to resist the sublime and symbolic liaison between the iconic 20th-century American corporation and the iconic modern architect. The resulting building—the structure formerly known as One IBM Plaza—has became synonymous with corporate power.

In September 2013, the building will reflect the changing face of capitalism with a new ... › View Project 1951 Farnsworth House Plano, IL, USA It—two parallel planes held in suspension between the earth and sky by only eight steel columns—seems simple, but Mies worked through 167 drawings to come to his final, fearless design. Like Einstein’s equation, its simplicity exudes an elegance through a thorough attention to detail. However, Mies did not create the ... › View Project 1965 School of Social Service Administration 969 East 60th St , University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA This low-rise, wholly symmetrical building sits on a raised plinth of travertine similar to Crown Hall. Built a decade after the completion of Crown, the Social Services Administration building merges many of the architectural solutions accomplished in both Crown and the Commons. However, the SSA is appreciably heavier, almost seeming ... › View Project 1946 Alumni Hall Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA Alumni Hall was Mies’ first academic building on the IIT campus.

As such, it framed the architectural language that guided the majority of other academic buildings. To align with the campus grid, Mies established a modular bay 24’ long, 24’ wide, and 12’ tall, which proved ideal for flexibility and ... › View Project 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung Stuttgart, Germany Set on a hill overlooking Stuttgart, Germany, these twenty-one houses and apartment buildings comprise one of the most celebrated communal endeavors in the history of modern architecture. The ultimate success of the Weissenhofsiedlung owes much to the artistic director, Mies van der Rohe, whose strategy was to invite a group ... › View Project 1907 Riehl House Potsdam, Germany The Riehl House was Mies' first building. He was twenty-one at the time and was working for Bruno Paul. Here, Mies reiterates much of Paul's classical German style with an austere stucco exterior and a pronounced roof that emphasizes the idea of shelter and home. The interior space pulled inspiration ...

› View Project 1931 MR Chair Marcel Breuer, Mies' peer at the Bauhaus, constructed the first tubular chair in 1925. It became known as the "Wassily," for another Bauhaus member, Wassily Kandinsky, and marked a shift in modern furniture design. Soon after, Mies created the MR Chair. By reducing the chair to its main parts and ... › View Project 1929 Barcelona Chair Perhaps the most iconic work from Mies' oeuvre, the Barcelona Chair at once gives life to and is born from its materials. Like the MR and Brno Chairs, it is composed of steel and leather. The steel bar legs ease up and over to support the seat and back of ... › View Project 1930 Tugendhat House Brno, Czech Republic The Tugendhat House occupies a graded site overlooking a broad valley, with a magnificent view of the city of Brno and the old Spielberg Castle. The house was designed as a large and luxurious villa for Grete and Fritz Tugendhat. This was the last major home Mies built in Europe. ...

› View Project 1929 The Barcelona Pavilion Barcelona, Spain Mies built the German (or Barcelona) Pavilion for the Barcelona International Exposition of 1929. It housed the ceremonial reception space for German industrial exhibits commissioned by the German government. Mies united sophisticated materials with a fluid open plan, which together endowed the space with an unprecedented modern elegance. The architecture's ... › View Project 1968 Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Germany The National Gallery is located on a sloping site along the north bank of the Landwehr Canal in Berlin, Germany. The second and final museum of Mies' career (the first being Houston's Museum of Fine Arts), the Gallery was his only commission from the government of West Germany. This provided ... › View Project 1932 Lemke House Berlin, Germany Unique to the Lemke House is its courtyard. No other house by Mies would feature this relation to green space. It's also the last house built by Mies in Germany, and he emigrated to the United States soon after. Like the Lange and Esters Houses, the Lemke House exists today ...

› View Project 1930 Made of steel and leather, the Brno Chair expresses Mies' regard for simplicity. The chair is named after Brno, Czechoslovakia, where it debuted in the Tugendhat House. › View Project 1930 Lange and Esters Houses Krefeld, Germany These two houses sit side by side on the Wilhelmshofallee in the artistocratic quarter of Krefeld, Germany. They were commissioned at or about the same time by Josef Esters and Hermann Lange, two executives of the silk weaving mills, or the Vereingte Seidenweberein A-G, which make Krefeld famous. Mies worked ... › View Project 1974 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Houston, Texas The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston is the first museum Mies ever built, and his only one in the U.S (his second and final being Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie). He was hired to design two additions to the Caroline Weiss Law Building. This existing structure was built by William Ward ... › View Project 1949 The Promontory Apartments Chicago, Illinois The Promontory Apartments mark Mies' foray into high-rise buildings.

Notably, it was the first tall building to exhibit its construction materials. Concrete, beams, and columns were left in plain sight, winning the praise of critics. The design of the building gave the most units possible a view of Lake Michigan, ... › View Project 1958 The Seagram Building New York, New York This 39-story, 516-foot tall office building was commissioned by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Corporation, purveyors of Seagram liquors. Noted for it's amber toned windows and public plaza, the Seagram is Mies' largest work. The architect worked around New York City's zoning codes mandating that skyscrapers recess or "set back" ... › View Project 1972 Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library Washington, D.C. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library evokes the solemnity of public institutions. This is the only library and the only building in Washington D.C. designed by Mies. Inside, stacks of books echo the rows of fluorescent lights. Outside, the sheer mass of the structure is felt as it stretches ...

› View Project 1965 Lafayette Park Detroit, Michigan Lafayette Park, just northeast of downtown Detroit, is a 78-acre housing development designed and realized by Mies van der Rohe. The first urban renewal project in the United States, it was founded by developer Herb Greenwald to help keep the middle class in the city. Alfred Caldwell, Mies’ longtime collaborator, ... › View Project 1969 Île-des-Soeurs Nuns' Island, Canada Located in Montreal, Quebec Île-des-Soeurs, or Nuns' Island, is home to three apartment buildings and an Esso gas station designed by Mies. › View Project 1952 50 x 50 House One of Mies' most famous unbuilt projects, the 50 x 50 house was conceived as a solution to the problem of mass housing, a genre of architecture he had never paid serious attention to in the past. In 2009, the artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovallé constructed a half-scale version of the house ...

› View Project 1964 Chicago Federal Center Chicago, Illinois This 42-story office building is located on Dearborn Street in the Chicago Loop. The project was commissioned by the General Services Administration of the US government as part of a plan initiated in the 1950s to update federal administrative and judiciary facilities nationwide. Begun in 1959, it was designed in ... › View Project 1969 Toronto-Dominion Center Toronto, Canada This urban planning project covers a 5.5 acre area in downtown Toronto, Ontario. Like the Chicago Federal Center, this complex is composed of two office towers along with a single one-story structure that houses the Toronto-Dominion Bank. › View Project 1952 McCormick House Elmhurst, Illinois The McCormick House is one instance of Mies' "Steel Frame Row Houses." It is reported that its steel-framed walls were brought from the factory to the site only under special allowance by the police for the transport vehicles. In 1994, the house was moved several blocks from its original location ...

› View Project 1956 Esplanade Apartment Buildings Chicago, Illinois Following the success of the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Mies and Greenwald conceived five major project proposals for Chicago's North Side. Esplanade was one of them. The first buildings ever built with an uninterrupted aluminum and glass curtain wall, the Esplanade also features colonnades and a private sun deck. › View Project 1935 Verseidag Factory Krefeld, Germany Commissioned by Verseidag, the large silk-weaving company in Krefeld, Germany, this factory appears to set the precedent for Mies' work at IIT. › View Project 1947 Perlstein Hall Chicago, Illinois In many ways, Perlstein is a culmination and amalgamation of many ideas Mies was developing on the IIT campus—in particular the expression of structure, modular organization, construction detailing. This building conforms to the structural bay of 24’ square and 12’ high, which provides an easy measure of comparison for building ...

› View Project 1954 The Commons Chicago, Illinois The Commons was intended to be an "amenities center" for the IIT campus with a dining hall, grocery store, barbershop, and laundry. By that time, Mies was uninterested in designing a building for specific program needs, so he delegated the project to Gene Summers, a 23-year old architect who had ... › View Project 1965 Mellon Hall of Science Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania One of many academic buildings designed by Mies, this low-rise structure is located at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. › View Project 1930 Urbig House Potsdam, Germany Impressed by the work he did for the Riehls, the Urbig family commissioned a home from Mies in 1915. Mies' first design called for a modern flat roof, but this was rejected. The new plan offered a more traditional hipped roof with five dormer windows. Such revisions were common, and ...

› View Project 1956 Commonwealth Promenade Apartments Chicago, Illinois Mies worked with developer Herbert Greenwald on these two mid-rise apartment buildings after the success of their collaboration on 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments the year before. The original design and development plan accounted for four, but this was eventually scaled back. The project bears many similarities to the Esplanade ... › View Project 1927 Afrikanischestrasse Apartments Berlin, Germany With their highly geometric structure and restricted windows, the form of these apartments appears to affect their function. Such lenience to practicality would never be seen in Mies' work following this low-cost housing project. › View Project 1931 MR Lounge Chair Like the MR Chair, the MR Lounge Chair features tubular stainless steel and a cantilever frame. Mies began with the iron rocking chairs that were the standard in 19th century Europe. He then injected them with modern materials and a minimalist aesthetic. This was another instance in which the architect ...

› View Project 1963 2400 Lakeview Chicago, Illinois The 2400 Lakeview Apartments consist of a single building made of reinforced concrete, aluminum, and grey-tinted glass. As with all Mies' work, this building derives beauty not from ornamentation, but instead from the essentials of architecture: materials and construction. In the ground floor lobby the elevator core appears as a ... › View Project 1929 Tugendhat Chair Seeking to make a comfortable lounge chair that maintained the restraint of his minimalist aesthetic, Mies arrived at the Tugendhat. Here, the cushions of the Barcelona meet the cantilever frame of the MR, arriving at an elegant solution to the overstuffed club chair. › View Project 1921 Friedrichstrasse Office Building Although it was never built, Mies' design for the Friedrichstrasse Office Building remains one of the most important structures in 20th century architecture. For the Friedrichstrasse architecture competition, Mies ignored several rules dictated in the guidelines and presented a radical concept to the committee: a skyscraper made entirely of glass ...

› View Project 1962 American Federal Building Des Moines, Iowa This two story steel and glass structure was built by Mies in 1962. The American Federal Building, along with Meredith Hall at Drake University, are the only works designed by the architect in Des Moines, Iowa. › View Project 1929 The Barcelona Couch was first used in the New York apartment of Architect Phillip Johnson in 1930. Scholars cite Lilly Reich as a co-designer. Reich also designed the interiors for the Johnson project. › View Project 1886 On March 27th, 1886 Ludwig Mies was born in Aachen, Germany. He would later incorporate his mother's maiden name ("Rohe") into his own as he rose to prominence in the architectural community. 1905 Mies Moves to Berlin Leaving his home of Aachen, Germany on the advice of a fellow architect, 19 year old Mies moved to the city seeking great architecture and a place in a notable firm. His family remained forever in Aachen and ran their masonry business while Mies was making a name for himself in the cultural capital of the time.

1908 Mies joins the staff at Peter Behrens' atelier Bookbinder, visual artist, graphic designer and architect, Peter Behrens was as innovative as he was multi-talented. His first building - a home for himself, the contents of which he also designed- is a prime example of Gesamtkunstwerk. As a "total work of art" Haus Behrens utilized every artistic medium to create a complete aesthetic experience. Following success of his home he designed the AEG Turbine Factory, once again designing the structure as well as its contents. He was one of the first designers to embrace industrialization as a way to provide well designed, useful objects to the masses. In 1907 he founded his own architecture firm in Berlin which included three architects who would later write the history of modern architecture: Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. 1926 Mies and Le Corbusier meet in Stuttgart, Germany At different points in time both Mies and Le Corbusier worked at Peter Behrens' atelier.

Nearly two decades after their training with Behrens the two had their first meeting at the Weissenhofsiedlung, which featured houses by both architects and the artistic directorship of Mies. 1930 Mies assumes directorship of the Bauhaus Following the resignation of Hannes Meyer who had taken over for Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe became the director of the Bauhaus. Though he had turned down the position when Gropius left he accepted it the second time around, sensing that the school needed a greater emphasis on form and function rather than politics. Such lenience to beauty won him the animosity of the radical members of the student body. Mies focused the curriculum on architecture and interior design with greater intensity such that all other subjects, like fine arts, fell by the wayside. When the Bauhaus closed in 1932 Mies promptly revived it, if only for a few months, as his own school. 1938 Mies left Germany in 1938 to head the Armour Institute, which later became the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Many members of the Bauhaus, including Joseph Albers, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, also moved to the United States at this time. 1932 The Bauhaus closes After 15 years of operation the Bauhaus is shut down by the Nazi regime. The modern aesthetic and "un-German" flavor of the school did not suit the nationalistic, neoclassical taste of German leaders. Many of the artists involved with the Bauhaus were exhibited in the Entartete Kunst exhibition, curated by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The show hoped to ridicule the featured styles and artists, including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. 1969 Mies dies in Chicago, Illinois In the summer of 1969 Mies was rushed to Wesley Memorial Hospital where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Two weeks later the combined force this pneumonia and cancer of the esophagus, which Mies had been living with for three years, overcame the architect. On August 19th, at the age of 83, Mies died.

1932 The Modern Architecture-International Exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art It was at this exhibition that the term "International Style" was born. Rather than emphasizing the social, art historical and technological aspects of architecture the curators, Philip Johnson (who later collaborated with Mies on the Seagram Building) and Henry-Russel Hitchcock, emphasized pure appearance. The exhibition was critiqued by architects and writers for clumping everyone from Frank Lloyd Wright to Walter Gropius under the same genre and overlooking crucial differences, and even crucial similarities, for the sake of categorization. The show ultimately proved to be an important moment in architecture's history, if only because of this controversy. 1958 Mies retires from IIT As his commissions increased Mies had less and less time to run the architecture program at Illinois Institute of Technology. At the age of 72, Mies left IIT and began focusing on his own projects. Skidmore, Owings and Merril took over the on-campus projects he did not complete. 1937

Question: Which architect designed the Seagram Building, New York City?
Answer: Philip Johnson