miesian tease

miesian tease
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

The 20th Century produced a handful of houses that deserve to be ranked with the greatest buildings of all time, and the Farnsworth House is one of them. In this small pavilion Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created a sublime architectural experience of extraordinary power, as exhilarating as a skyscraper and as profound as a cathedral.

Mies teases us with the pretense of simplicity –- you could think this is nothing but a glass box with a white frame –- but this house is about as simple as a Zen garden: utterly spare, perfectly composed.

Paul Goldberger, Farnsworth: The Lightness of Being in the July | August 2004 issue of Preservation

Made a pilgrimage out to Farnsworth yesterday –- and yep, it lives up to all the hype. Need some time to sort through and upload some of the images that I took away. (None of them do it justice, of course.) Stay tuned.