Mies van der Rohe influenced the world with his architecture. The establishment was caught off guard and began to criticize what vab der Rohe said they didn’t yet understand. Over time, he was considered a living legend by many of his colleagues. However, to this day his work is controversial. For Mies, simple elegant form and function eliminated ornamentation which he considered useless. He inspired a generation of architects and along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, is considered a Chicago master. He won every possible major award in the field and in 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Mies van der Rohe with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Among other brilliant design changes, Mies lifted buildings up a few floor exposing the living and working space on the ground level of buildings. It made viewing buildings more appealing from the outside in and the inside out. Mies’ work defines the campus design of the Illinois Institute of Technology where he taught. His buildings dot Chicago, the United States and the rest of the world. Even today, many Chicago architects find a way in their design to give a tip of the hat to the master
who helped make Chicago arguably the most important architecture city of its time.
Ralph Braseth 