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Note: Mies van der Rohe: a Critical Biography book
The authoritative biography of Mies van der Rohe has been updated through building records, the recollections of students and a court transcript. It's a gripping read, even if you're not a fan, says Christopher Woodward
Mies van der Rohe: a critical biography
By Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst (2nd edition)
University of Chicago Press, 568pp, PB pounds 29
In the austere final room of the splendid Bauhaus exhibition at the Barbican earlier this year, a typewritten note was displayed. From Mies van der Rohe to the Berlin school's students, it explained that while the Gestapo had allowed the school to remain open, the conditions were unacceptable and it would close forthwith. This event marked what might now be described as the third watershed of Mies's professional life.
The first was in 1905, when Ludwig Mies, the second son of a monumental mason, born in Aachen in 1886, with limited formal education and few skills in anything except making large-scale drawings of plaster mouldings, was advised by a local architect to seek his fortune in Berlin. Two years later he was employed by Bruno Paul, a founder member of the Deutscher Werkbund.
In 1906,...