Less is More

When you study architecture, the term “less is more” comes up a lot. That saying was popularized by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as he believed that structures don’t have to be intricate pieces of art with dips, swerves, angles, and curves. Mies believed that a building should be functional first and foremost, and then the art can be made around that. But even for him, he enjoyed details in his architecture; however, his details could easily be missed by the untrained eye. He was the type of person to strip a building down to its bare bones and make it look simple, but in an incredibly elegant way.

Recently, during my third-year architecture field trip to Chicago, 16 of us students were given the chance to go see one of Mies van der Rohe’s finest pieces of architecture. The Farnsworth House, completed in 1951, is a house that I like to consider as one of the crown jewels of residential architecture. It’s located just about an hour outside of the city in Plano, IL. It was intended to be a weekend home of sorts, so Mies stripped it down to just that, a temporary house. There was no major storage and the only separate rooms were the main and guest bath centered in the middle of the building. Apart from that, the house was one room forming a continuous loop around the core that held those spaces.

As seemingly simple as this house was, Mies went all out with his invisible details. Our tour guide had to point some out to us, but I was able to find some of his details that he was famous for. First, as seen in the picture, the walls are almost entirely made of glass. The special thing about these panes is that they are single panels framed in steel, fitted to microscopic accuracy in Canada and installed on site to fit just right. One detail I noticed was the metal bolts around the frame had been painted over thoroughly to make them practically disappear. It was almost as if the house appeared with the windows embedded into the steel skeleton.

The whole experience was a detail as well. The journey from the visitor’s center to the house was a half mile long and swerved through the forest and along side the river. As we approached the structure, we got a sense of the minimalism it uses to make it a masterpiece of architecture. Walking up to the house is a detail quite like no other. Mies loved giving the user an experience through his buildings. For this house, as you step onto the first platform, you encounter the first level of enclosure, the very plain you stand on. Take a few steps up to the porch, you encounter the second level of enclosure, the roof above your head. Finally, as you enter the tall glass doors, you encounter the glass surrounding you on all sides creating multiple levels of enclosure. It is details like this and more that Mies is known for.

A picture from my visit of me in front of the house

When it comes to how I felt about the Farnsworth House, I did truly love it and the journey it took me on as I experienced it. For minimalist architecture as a whole however, my feelings do tend to change. Many architects seem to take “less is more” all too seriously and strip their structures down and holding them hostage at the simplest level. Mies knew how to work with minimalism but I feel like that is truly lost in much of today’s architecture. It’s because of this lazy architecture that this style got criticized so much for being boring. There were even other well-known architects like Robert Venturi that went as far as to counter his motto by saying “less is a bore.” For me, at the end of the day, I truly believe less should be so much more, without being a bore.

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