A Peek at the Farnsworth House

The Farnsworth House is one of the most celebrated modernist structures of the 20th century. The glass and steel house designed by Mies van der Rohe and built in 1951 in Plano, Illinois is now a historical landmark. We were in Chicago this weekend and were dying to see the Farnsworth House despite the fact that no tours were available until April 1st. I will skip the details on how we managed to experience it, let's just say it was worth the trip. But, I highly recommend booking a tour to see the interior.

"The dominance of a single, geometric form in a pastoral setting, with a complete exclusion of extraneous elements normally associated with habitation, reinforces the architect’s statement about the potential of a building to express “dwelling” in its simplest essence. While the elongated rectangle of the house lies parallel to the course of the Fox River, the perpendicular cross axis, represented by the suspended stairways, faces the river directly. With its emphatically planar floors and roof suspended on the widely-spaced, steel columns, the one-story house appears to float above the ground, infinitely extending the figurative space of the hovering planes into the surrounding site." (To read more please visit the Farnsworth Landmarks Illinois website).