Join the SAH/SCC and the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design as we host a very special in-person, Authors on Architecture event. On Saturday, March 29th, author Dietrich Neumann will talk about his new book, Mies van der Rohe: An Architect in His Time (Yale University Press, 2024).
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) was a German-born American architect and designer whose work in Europe and North America has had an enduring influence on modern and contemporary architecture worldwide. During his sixty-year career, he fundamentally rethought architectural types that shaped modern life, including the office building, apartment building, and private home. True to his alleged dictum “less is more,” Mies van der Rohe’s style is characterized by utmost simplicity, elegance of materials, and radical formal and functional innovation, as exemplified by such iconic projects as the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, and the Seagram Building in New York.
In this book, renowned architectural historian Dietrich Neumann presents a new, critical look at Mies and complicates the established narrative about him. Diverging from the reverential posture of many existing accounts, Neumann insists on the importance of the contemporary context—social, political, and architectural—for understanding the architect’s life and work. The book draws on many overlooked archival and primary sources to demonstrate how and why Mies’s designs were shaped and received, foregrounding contemporary critics’ responses and the work of Mies’s collaborators and peers.
Dietrich Neumann is professor of the history of modern architecture at Brown University.
This event takes place at the historic Neutra Office Building (1950, Richard J. Neutra) in Silver Lake. It will also be broadcast live via Zoom and recorded for later viewing for those who cannot attend in real time.
Authors on Architecture: Neumann on van der Rohe—Saturday, March 1st, 2025; 11:00 AM- 12:30PM, Pacific Time; $5. Attend in person at the Neutra Office Building, 2379 Glendale Boulevard, Silver Lake or attend via Zoom. Go to https://www.sahscc.org/site/index.php?function=event_details&id=535; Zoom link sent upon registration.
