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The virtual Second life Farnsworth House built by SL resident Designer Dingson.FARNSWORTH WEB SITES IN RLhttp://www.farnsworthhouse.org/http://www.farnsworthhousefriends.org/house.htmlhttp://architecture.about.com/library/blmies-farnsworth.htm WoW what a story this house has. I knew about the house and wanted to do shave wanted to live in it as it was built. I thought right off it would have been like living in a terarium. Boy did she get taken and screwed also by the courts. No ventilation or real insulation the way it should have been done. I hope I can post the story the SL builder wrote. You can visit it virtually @ The Farnsworth House, Architecture Island (14, 236, 22)Filmed & Edited by sophia Yates 2009 Designer Dingson provides all this information on the site in Second Life. Fasinating story. THE ARCHITECTLudwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He, along with Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture. Mies, like many of his post WW I contemporaries, sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras. He created an influential Twentieth-Century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity.THE HOUSEThe Farnsworth House, designed and constructed between 1945-51, is a one-room weekend retreat in a once-rural setting, located 55 miles southwest of Chicago. The house is located on a 60 acre estate site adjoining the Fox River, near the city of Plano, Illinois. The steel and glass house was commissioned by Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a prominent Chicago-based kidney specialist, as a place where she could enjoy nature and engage in her hobby, translating poetry. Mies van de Rohe created for her a 1,400 square foot house that is widely recognized as a masterpiece of modernist architecture. Mies conceived the building as an architectural shelter simultaneously independent of and intertwined with nature. Mies did not build on the upland or sloped portions of the site, choosing instead to engage nature in a sophisticated game of chicken by building on the flood plain near the rivers edge. The enclosed space and a screened porch are elevated five feet on a raised floor platform, just slightly above the 100 year flood level, with a large intermediate terrace level. The house is anchored to the site in the cooling shadow of a large and majestic maple tree. The entrance is located on the sunny side facing the river, forcing visitors to turn corners and view the house from various angles when approaching the house. The house is an embodiment of Mies' mature vision of modern architecture: a minimal "skin and bones" framework providing an enclosure with a clearly understandable order.The highly crafted pristine white structural frame and all-glass walls define a simple rectangular interior space, letting nature and light envelop the interior space. A wood paneled core (housing mechanical equipment, kitchen, fireplace, and toilets) is positioned within the open space to define the living, dining and sleeping spaces without using actual walls or rooms. No partitions touch the surrounding glass enclosure. Full height draperies on a perimeter track provide shading and privacy when and where desired. The simple rectilinear form is barely defined by 8 exposed steel structural members set in two parallel rows and painted pure white. The house seems to float weightlessly above the ground it occupies.A LOVE STORY?Even though Dr Farnsworth had collaborated extensively with Mies during the building and planning of the Farnsworth - they were rumoured to spend hours together at the site discussing details - she was amazed to be given a bill for $72,000 in 1951 (the equivalent of maybe US$500,000 today). There are rumours that she may well have fallen in love with Mies during this time and upon completion she found that her romantic aspirations toward Mies were not being returned.Mies justified the cost overruns due to escalating post-war steel and material prices, but the soured personal relationship between Dr. Edith Farnsworth and Mies, led to a lawsuit for non-payment of construction costs and a countersuit for malpractice. Mies could prove that Dr Farnsworth had approved the plans, and he won in court. Dr Farnsworth's accusations were unsubstantiated and the court dismissed her suit. Dr Farnsworth pursued her protests in public by issuing a scathing attack and a national appeal to architecture critics and other opponents of modernism in House Beautiful magazine. Frank Lloyd Wright used the occasion to denounce the house, the architect, and the International (modernist) Style in general. In his opinion, modernists were closet communists with mechanistic views of human needs and worshipers of conformist minimalism in all things. LIVING WITH THE FARNSWORTHThe use of large amount of glass is hugely energy inefficient, though the home does use sunlight to heat its interior. Dr Farnsworth complained of the heating bills being exorbitant. The Farnsworth acted like a lantern when lit at nighttime, attracting swarms of mosquitos and moths. There is no place for garbage, not enough electrical outlets to be a practical living space, too few screens and not enough ventilation. The rust prone steel is very high-maintenance, requiring frequent sanding and painting. The leaves in autumn stain the decks and necessitate scrubbing and bleaching every two weeks. The house has flooded twice, in 1956 and 1996, causing significant damage to utilities, wood veneers, glass and to furnishings.FAMOUS QUOTES Mies: “Less is more” - Dr Farnsworth “Less is not more, it is simply less”Mies: “God is in the details”PAST AND PRESENT OWNERSIn 1968, the local highway department condemned a 2 acre portion of the property adjoining the house for a raised highway. Dr Farnsworth sued to stop the project but lost the court case. In 1972 Farnsworth sold the house to British property magnate, art collector, and architectural aficionado Lord Peter Palumbo. He added air conditioning, extensive landscaping and his art collections to the grounds, commissioning modern art including sculptures by Anthony Caro and Richard Serra. After owning the property for 31 years, Palumbo removed the art and sold the property at auction to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2003 for a reported $7.5 million. Building tours are now conducted by the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. The house is listed in the National Register and is now designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior.FURTHER THOUGHTSThe Farnsworth House has been described as sublime, a temple hovering between heaven and earth, a poem, a work of art.I would concur with all of the above, something tells me that Mies needed a patron to build his masterpiece and he found one in Dr Farnsworth. In my opinion the troubles that followed them after the build were almost inevitable, they were both victims of their own ambition. Dr Farnsworth wanted high architecture, she wanted to make a statement, but she also expected the house to be habitable and practical and to be relatively reasonably priced…Mies however had built an architectural masterpiece, years in the making it was the culmination of everything Mies had strived to achieve, it was almost perfect in every detail. Dr Farnsworth’s objections were based in the reality of it all, surely her focus should have been directed more towards the acknowledgement of what had been created?MIES VAN DER ROHE, MUST SEE!The German Pavilion built for the 1929 World’s Fair in Barcelona. (Also known as The Barcelona Pavilion).The Barcelona Chair and Table.S. R. Crown Hall, the home of the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois.Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum, a museum for classical modern art in Berlin.

• Release Date

  Apr 28, 2009

• Runtime

  04:06