Van Der Rohe, Famous Architect, Dead

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32073, 22 August 1969, Page 5

Van Der Rohe, Famous Architect, Dead

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

CHICAGO, Aus’. 19. Dr Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the famous German-born architect, died in the Wesley Memorial Hospital in Chicago last night. He was 83.

He began his career as an apprentice to famous European designers and architects, and in the early 1930 s he was the director of Germany’s Bauhaus School of Art, which influenced design in architecture, furniture, weaving and typography. Dr van der Rohe emigrated to the United States in 1937 to become director of the department of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a post from which he retired in 1958.

Among the buildings he helped design is the Seagram Building, in New York City. His use of glass and steel made Dr van der Rohe famous, even as long ago as 1919, when he built his first glass high-rise building in Berlin. Other examples of his architecture are to be found in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Brazil, Mexico and Canada.

His awards included the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in 1959, and the medal of honour of the Danish Architectural Association, in 1965, Dr van der Rohe was the second great architect to die recently. Dr Walter Gropius, known as “the father of modern design," died in Boston on July 5, at the age of 86. He

was the founder of the Bauhaus School of Art, which at one time or another had such impressive faculty members as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, the painters; and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the sculptor.