What is this Mies floor plan?

August 15, 2008 9:19 AM

Can anyone provide more information about this Mies van der Rohe floor plan?

I remember seeing it in a slide show while in architecture school years ago but all I can find on Google is this small picture:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/img/oxford/Oxford_Architecture/0198606788.mies-van-der-rohe-ludwig.1.jpg

(I can't see the link in the preview so I just pasted the address here...)

I'm pretty sure it was never built but I could be wrong. I've always thought it was an incredible beautiful floor plan and I would love to know more about it.

posted by GaGaLoc to media & arts (4 comments total)

Well according to this it is a "Plan of a proposed brick villa (1923), showing the influence of Mondrian and De Stijl". Maybe that bit of information helps you in your further search?
posted by Ms. Next at 9:30 AM on August 15, 2008

I don't have the book in front of me, but I have a Mies monograph by Werner Blaser that uses that floor plan as the cover image. As I remember, it was unbuilt, like many of Mies' earlier studies. Ms. Next's info is pretty spot on.
posted by LionIndex at 9:41 AM on August 15, 2008

It's an unbuilt project, usually referred to as the "brick country house".

It's in several architecture history texts, for example Jurgen Joedicke's
History of modern architecture. (that's the one I happen to have handy at the moment - it's in many others)

Here are some citations referring to it from the Avery Index:

An exercise in transformation: the Villa Capra of Palladio, 1552, and the Brick House of Mies van der Rohe, 1922
Czarnecki, Mary Francis.
Threshold: journal of the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1982, v.1, p.129-131

Shigeru Ban: Sagaponac House - Furniture House 5, Long Island, New York, U.S.A.
Mcquaid, Matilda.
GA houses, 2006 Nov., n.96, p.28-41
... development on Long Island "is based on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's unbuilt Brick Country House (1924); Ban reinterpreted the plan to suit the program, structural system, and site." Design: 2001-2003; construction: 2003-2006.

Mies van der Rohe
Zervos, Christian.
Cahiers d'art, 1928, v. 3, n. 1, p. 35-38, pl. facing p. 35
Elevation and plan of a brick country house and other house.
posted by gyusan at 9:43 AM on August 15, 2008

There's more about it in a book about him, of which you can see the relevant part here.
posted by Ms. Next at 9:46 AM on August 15, 2008