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A new appreciation of the master architect and his practice of `the difficult art of the simple: BY CATHLEEN MCGUIGAN
NOT EVERYONE COULD FEEL snug in the Farnsworth House. The 1951 pavilion by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is basically one big glass room, with two bathrooms tucked into a central utility core. Even the client, a Chicago doctor named Edith Farnsworth, had trouble feeling at home in the Plano, Ill., country house-she complained that her "anti-house" was expensive to heat and difficult to cool, and guests felt the chipmunks were watching them. (She may've been nursing a broken heart, too, or at least a bruised ego, from a liaison with her architect.) The place prompted an attack on Mies from the powerful editor of House Beautiful, Elizabeth Gordon, who called his architecture "cold" and "barren."
Yet the Farnsworth House embodies almost everything for which Mies is revered: it seems to float lightly above the ground; it expresses its structure in the classical rhythm of its eight white steel columns; it's beautifully detailed and uses rich materials, such as the Roman travertine ofits floors and steps. And more mysteriously, the house gives off an unmistakable spiritual vibe-there's something magically serene in its flawless proportions and its harmony with the landscape surrounding it. Just last month, the state of Illinois agreed to buy this modernist icon for $6.2 million, ensuring it will be preserved.