Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The Völklingen Ironworks flooded in red light
Copyright: Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte | Oliver Dietze

Hugo Erfurth   Portrait Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 1934 upscale

Hugo Erfurth Portrait Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 1934 upscale
Copyright: Hugo Erfurth | Public Domain

Born in 1886 in Aachen, Germany
died in 1969 in Chicago, US

Work

Design for a skyscraper (‘glass house’)

Entwurf für ein Hochhaus, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Entwurf für ein Hochhaus, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Copyright: © VG Bild-Kunst, 2025

In the 1920s, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe presented skyscraper designs with X-ray aesthetics, featuring transparent façades and skeletal steel structures. He used illustrations of X-ray images and bones in his articles for illustrative purposes and referred to his work as “skin-and-bone architecture”. The idea of making internal structures visible became a central architectural principle for Mies van der Rohe, one that recurs in many of his later buildings.