Farnsworth House

The Farnsworth House is a one room weekend retreat located on the banks of the Fox River, about an hour's drive from Chicago. It is considered by many to be the pinnacle of International Style in America. With the natural surroundings providing the privacy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was able to create a continuous glass wall that engages the resident with nature. The physical elements of the building have been distilled to their essence. As historian Maritz Vandenburg describes it, "All of the paraphernalia of traditional living (rooms, walls, doors, interior trim, loose furniture, pictures on walls, even personal possessions) have been virtually abolished in a puritanical vision of simplified, transcendental existence. Mies had finally achieved a goal towards which he had been feeling his way for three decades".