Built in the now Polish bank of the Neisse river in 1926, the Wolf House is considered the first attempted approach by Mies van der Rohe to modern architecture and the project which set many of the bases for his latter most recognized architecture.

The house was commissioned in 1925 by Erich Wolf, a textile manufacturer with great interest in art. The architect was granted complete freedom in the design of the dwelling and for the first time Mies abandons the use of the sloping roof and implements the fluidity of interior spaces, freeing the movement between halls as would later mirror in the Barcelona Pavilion or the Farnsworth House.

This milestone in modern architecture, although it was practically destroyed in 1945 after a bombing of the Soviet army during its entry into Germany, has recently been the subject of controversy among the fields of architecture and restoration.

A group of German architects has begun a campaign to rebuild the family home based on photographs and sketches of the time. One of the leaders of this venture is the retired architect Florian Mausbach, who expects to raise 2 million euros for the reconstruction. This project started last March with a small exhibition in Berlin which, according to what Maushbach said to The New York Times, will travel to other German cities and eventually to Poland and Chicago.

However, this is not the first time that studies on this project of the German architect are made. In 2001 Leo Schmidt, the professor of architecture at the Technical University of Brandenburg in Cottbus, led with Barry Bergdoll, professor of art history at Columbia University and the former chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an excavation of the ruins of the house. The investigation work revealed part of the basement walls, which permitted the mapping of the original arrangement of the house.

Schmidt’s opinion on the subject is quite different from the idea proposed by Mausbach of ​​rebuilding the Wolf House. The aforementioned architect believes that, even though the reconstruction of the Barcelona Pavilion helped to understand in depth the work of Mies van der Rohe, the case of the Wolf House is quite different. The reason behind this thought is the own purpose why the house was built, since it was designed to host a large collection of furniture and pieces of art. The information of these objects is scarce, and this too little information would result in a rebuilt empty shell which would not help to expand our knowledge about the famous architect.

According to what Schmidt said to the Times, “The rebuilt house could end up with bare, white-walled rooms, giving modern visitors a totally false impression of the spaces Mies originally created”. The proposal of Schmidt is to preserve the contemporary ruin and to enhance the work by other means than those of reconstruction.

The issue of reconstruction of affected buildings during World War II generates an intense debate in Germany at a more social level, but more with a more ideological approach. Critics say that the reconstruction of these buildings entails the erasure in the collective memory of what the Nazism provoked. Many of them recommend to preserve these buildings its state of ruin to serve as a reminder of the disaster that happened in that times.

It is clear that, there are still issues such as the memory where it is difficult to agree, despite nearly a century has passed since the war. Meanwhile, each side prepares its campaign

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aquisgran the 27th of Marz of 1886 and died in Chicago the 17th of August of 1969. He was active in Germany, from 1908 to 1938, when he moved to USA and where he was until his death. He was also considerate a “master” of the Modern Movement, since the 50s, and he was one of the fathers of this movement with Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Mies van der Rohe, who in his childhood was guided by masters as Hendrik Petrus Berlage or Peter Behrens, he always kept tabs of the Villlet-Le-Duc’s rationalism or Karl Friedrich Schinkel eclectic classicism, having a strong connection with the architectural historicism. As he said in his manifesto “Baukunst und Zeiwille” about this: “it is not possible to move on looking back”.

In 1900 he began to work with his father in the stone workshop of the family and shortly afterward he move to Berlin to work with Bruno Paul in 1902, designing furniture. He planned his first house in 1907, the “Riehl House” in Neubabelsbers and worked from 1908 to 1911 in Peter Behrens’s studio. There he was influenced by structural technics and designs based on steel and glass, as the AEG project in Berlin. While he was in Behrens’s studio he designed the Perls House.

In 1912 he openned his own studio and projected a house in The Hague for Kröller-Müller marriage. The studio received few jobs in its first years, but Mies, contrary to architects as Le Corbusier, in his first years he already showed an architectural policy to follow, being an architect that changed little his architectural philosophy. To his epoch belonged the Heertrasse House and Urbig House as his principal projects.

In 1913 se move to the outskirts of Berlin with his wife Ada Bruhn with whom he would have three kids. The family broke up when Mies was posted to Romania during the World War I.

In 1920, Ludwig Mies changed his surname to Mies van der Rohe and in 1922 he joined as member to the “Novembergruppe”. One year later, in 1923, he published the magazine “G” with Doesburg Lisstzky and Rechter. During this period he worked in two houses, the Birck House and the Mosler House. In 1926, Mies van der Rohe held the post of chief commissioner of the German Werkbund exhibition, being his president this year. In this period he projected the Wolf House in Guden and the Hermann Lange House in Krefeld and in 1927, he met the designer Lilly Reich, in the house exhibition of Weissenhof, where he was director, and he planned a steel structure block for her.

In 1929, he received the project the German National Pavilion to the International Exhibition of Barcelona) rebuilt in 1986=, where he included the design of the famous Barcelona Chair.

In 1930, he planned in Brün – present Czech Republic -, the Tugendhat Villa. He managed the Dessau’s Bauhaus until his closure in 1933. The Nazism forced Mies to emigrate to the United States in 1937. He was designated chair of the Architecture department in Armour Institute in 1938, the one that later merged with the Lewis Institute, forming the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and where he took the responsibility to build a considerable extent of the foundations of the Intitute from 1939 and 1958. One of the buildings of this complex is the Crown Hall, IIT (1950-1956).

In 1940, he met the person who would be his partner until his death, Lora Marx. He became citizen of the USA in 1944 and, one year later, he began with the Farnsworth House’s project (1945-1950). During this stage, in 1948, he designed his first skyscraper: the two towers of the Lake Drive Apartments in Chicago, which were finished in 1951. Shortly after, he planned other building of this typology, the Commonwealth Promenade Apartments, from 1953 to 1956.

In 1958 he projected his most important work: the Segram Building in New York. This building has 37 storeys, covered with glass and bronze, which built and planned with Philip Johnson. He retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology the same year. He also built more towers and complexes as: the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963-1969) and the Westmount Square (1965-1968) and designed the New Square and Office Tower of The City of London (1967).

From 1962 to 1968, he built the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which would be his last legacy to the architecture. The building that rose as exhibition hall is made of steel, glass and granite.

He died in Chicago the 17th of August if 1969 leaving behind a large legacy and influence to next generations.

The Mies van der Rohe’s most famous sentences are “Less is more” and “God is in the details”.
 

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Published on: April 24, 2016
Cite: "The debate around Mies van der Rohe's Wolf House" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/debate-around-mies-van-der-rohes-wolf-house> ISSN 1139-6415
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