The comprehensive story of an icon of modern architecture: the Edith Farnsworth House, designed by Mies van der Rohe One of the most famous residences in modern history, a glass and steel marvel that seems to float above its site, the Edith Farnsworth House had been legendary in the public imagination long before it could be widely accessed. This book charts the house’s original design by Mies van der Rohe and periods of neglect, flooding, and new ownership by Lord Peter Palumbo. Now publicly accessible and celebrating twenty years of being owned and administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, this icon of modern architecture commissioned by client and patron Edith Farnsworth now gets its due. The Edith Farnsworth House is one of the most prized residences in modern architectural history, whose sometimes fraught history culminates in its publicly accessible life today. The book, which newly foregrounds the key role of client Edith Farnsworth, is written and edited by Michelangelo Sabatino, who contributes deep expertise on modernist architecture, and includes an essay by architectural historian Dietrich Neumann, excerpts of Edith Farnsworth’s unpublished memoir, as well as interviews with Mies’s grandson Dirk Lohan, and the house’s second owner, Lord Peter Palumbo. Published in association with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, this book is published is a trove of cultural and visual history, and includes photographs by Hedrich Blessing, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Annie Leibovitz, in addition to documentation of cultural collaborations with artists, designers, and performance troupes such as Virgil Abloh, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, and Gerard & Kelly.

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. It presents several previously unknown buildings, projects, and furniture designs and challenges long-established interpretations of key works. Comprehensively illustrated and covering the entirety of Mies’s career, this ambitious book is the most substantial account to date of the life and work of one of the most important architects of the twentieth century.