Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: His five most famous buildings

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe revolutionized architecture. His simple dictum that 'less is more' inspired building designs around the world. No wonder he received a loving Google doodle on Tuesday, his 126 birthday. Want to move past the doodle? Click through our short slideshow for a look Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's best work.

SR Crown Hall and the Farnsworth House

Google
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe got a Google doodle Tuesday for designing many influential buildings, such as the SR Crown Hall, which is illustrated here.

In place of the traditional multi-colored logo, the Google homepage today is emblazoned with an image of the SR Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago. The doodle is an homage to the famed German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who would have turned 126 today. 

Mies van der Rohe, or simply "Mies," as he was commonly known, helped promulgate the phrase "less is more," a minimalist motto he made the core of his clean, spare, striking designs. SR Crown Hall, conceptualized in 1956 and granted National Historic Landmark status in 2001, is among Mies' best known work – Time magazine once called the building "one of the world's most influential, inspiring and astonishing structures."

But Mies designed widely, and by his death in 1969, his "skin and bones" style had become a hallmark of modern architecture. 

Located 60 miles west of Chicago, in the Illinois town of Plano, the Farnsworth House, which was first conceived in 1945 and finally built in 1951, is a symbol of modern design. The house is comprised of long steel beams and floor-to-ceiling glass, making the entire building a kind of prism. "Every physical element has been distilled to its irreducible essence," one historian wrote of the house. "The interior is unprecedentedly transparent to the surrounding site, and also unprecedentedly uncluttered in itself."

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