The Farnsworth House

Working on the latest Ace Hotel

Built between 1945 and 1951 for Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a prominent nephrologist from Chicago, this glass pavilion seems to float in the air and merge into its surroundings - the green scenery of Plano, Illinois, above the Fox River to the South.

Supported by eight steel columns, the single-story house with floor-to-ceiling windows opens up to the woods around it. The interior is one large room filled with freestanding elements that provide subtle differentiations within the open space - zones for sleeping, cooking, dressing, eating, and sitting. The space is flowing around a wood block called “core” containing private and mechanical areas such as toilet, kitchen, and fireplace.

Aside from walls in the center of the house enclosing bathrooms, the floor plan is completely open in a true minimalist way. The man-made geometric form creates a relationship with the extraneous landscape surrounding it to exemplify "dwelling" in its simplest state.

As Mies stated on his achievement, "If you view nature through the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it gains a more profound significance than if viewed from the outside. That way more is said about nature - it becomes part of a larger whole."*

* After a legal dispute over the construction, Edith Farnsworth seemed not to share the same point of view “ The truth is that in this house with its four walls of glass I feel like a prowling animal, always on the alert. I am always restless. Even in the evening. [...] What else? I don’t keep a garbage can under my sink. Because you can see the whole ‘kitchen’ from the road on the way in here and the can would spoil the appearance of the whole house. So I hide it in the closet farther down from the sink. Mies talks about his ‘free space’: but his space is very fixed. Any arrangement of furniture becomes a major problem, because the house is transparent, like an X-ray.” However, it seems Farnsworth’s negative view of the house was fueled not only by its supposed ideological flaws, but also by heartbreak ; she had an ambiguous and tumultuous romance with Mies, a modernist love affair soon to be adapted to the big screen.