Mies van der Rohe

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.