Born Maria Ludwig Mies on March 27, 1886, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is a German-American architect and designer who founded the Contemporary style movement in the early 20th century. He is recognized for his “mark “skin and bones” architecture and furniture creations as well as for his maxims “Less is more” and God is in the elements”.

A citizen of the significant West German city of Aachen, Mies van der Rohe used up his early years working in his father’s stone-carving shop and in some local design firms. In 1908, van der Rohe transferred to Berlin and became a learner to the well-known architect Peter Behrens. It was during his wait at Behrens that Mies van der Rohe was revealed to the creations theories of the time and became aware with colleagues Modern movement pioneers Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (better identified under the pseudonym) Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. After his apprenticeship was accomplished, van der Rohe worked shortly as a construction manager at the German Embassy in Saint Petersburg, Russia before doing his own professional career and embracing his now celebrated surname.

Mies van der Rohe initiated with creating upper-class homes in the conventional Germanic way, but then rejected traditional design altogether in help of the latest fashion. His design as an advanced architect accepted cultural genuineness|standing} after World War I, where German Empire’s conquered was broadly approved as the incompetence of the old imperial traditions of Europe. In addition, Mies van der Rohe often complemented his architectural projects with his own furniture creations so as to finish the modernist environment of his construction. Quite a lot of examples of this comprise the steel-and-leather Barcelona Chair for the German Pavilion in Barcelona, Spain and the Brno and Tugendhat Chairs for the Villa Tugendhat in Czechoslovakia (now named the Czech Republic).

Mies van der Rohe also developed to be the director of the Dessau (and later in Berlin) branch of the Bahaus school by Walter Gropius in the 1930s, but he was later obligate by the Nazi regime to close down the school in 1933. Van der Rohe immigrated to the United States soon after and maintained his career as an architect and designer until his death August 17, 1969. His carcass are hidden at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.