It’s tempting, in telling the story of the Edith Farnsworth Home, to interrupt out clichés like “People who reside in glass houses ought ton’t throw stones.” For the residence in question is made predominantly of glass, or fairly glass and metal, and its first personaler turned out to have various stones for its architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the final director of the Bauhaus, who’d immigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States within the late 9teen-thirties. It was at a dinner party in 1945 that he happened to satisfy the forward-thinking Chicago doctor Edith Farnsworth, who expressed an interest in constructing a wholly modern retreat properly outaspect town. Requested if one among his apprentices may do the job, Mies supplied to take it on himself.
The duty, as Mies conceived of architecture in his time, was to construct for an period during which excessive and fastly advancing industrial technology was becoming unavoidready in ordinary lives. Such lives, properly lived, would require new frames, and thoroughly considered ones at that. The form ultimately taken by the Farnsworth Home is one such body: orderly, and to a level that might be referred to as excessive, whereas on another level maximally permissive of human freedom.
That was, in any case, the concept: in physical actuality, Farnsworth herself had an extended listing of practical complaints about what she started to name “my Mies-conception,” not least to do with its attraction of bugs and inexperiencedhouse-like warmth retention (uncompensated for, in true European fashion, by airconditioning).
Chroniclers of the Farnsworth Home saga are likely to malestion that the central relationship seems to have exceeded that of architect and consumer, not less than for a time. However whatever affection had as soon as existed between them had certainly evaporated by the point they have been suing every other towards the tip of construction, with Mies alleging non-payment and Farnsworth alleging malpractice. Within the occasion, Farnsworth misplaced in courtroom and used the home as every weekfinish retreat for a couple of a long time earlier than promoteing it to the British developer and architectural enthusiast Peter Palumbo, who especially loved its ambience during thunderstorms. At present it operates as a museum, as defined by its executive director Scott Mahaffey in the brand new Open Area video above. Hearing about all of the turmoil behind the Farnsworth Home’s conception, the attendees of its excursions would possibly discover themselves assumeing that hell hath no fury like a consumer scorned.
Related content:
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Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
