A future Architect.

Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois

The Farnsworth House is one of the most significant of Mies van der Rohe’s works, equal in importance to such canonical monuments as the Barcelona Pavilion, built for the 1929 International Exposition and the 1954-58 Seagram Building in New York. Its significance is two-fold. First, as one of a long series of house projects, the Farnsworth House embodies a certain aesthetic culmination in Mies van derRohe’s experiment with this building type. Second, the house is perhaps the fullest expression of modernist ideals that had begun in Europe, but which were consummated in Plano, Illinois. As historian Maritz Vandenburg has written in his monograph on the Farnsworth House:

“Every physical element has been distilled to its irreducible essence. The interior isunprecedentedly transparent to the surrounding site, and alsounprecedentedly uncluttered in itself. All of the paraphernalia of traditional living –rooms, walls, doors, interior trim, loose furniture, pictures on walls, even personal possessions – have been virtually abolished in a puritanical vision of simplified, transcendental existence.Mies had finally achieved a goal towards which he had been feeling his way for three decades.”

louis kahn

Richard Long. Cornish Slate Line, 1990. Tate Gallery, London.

The Darwin D. Martin House Complex (also known as the Darwin Martin House National Historic Landmark)

I  am so lucky, and love that this place is close to where I live. I go look at it quite often. We have 3 other FLW designed houses, and the 5 buildings on this estate here in the Buffalo area.

The Martin House was built between 1903 and 1905. 

It is 26,140 ft²

FLW considered this his “opus"

The last photo is the very modern visitor’s center. It’s a nice contrast to the other buildings on the property, which include the gardener’s cottage, and a small home built for his sister. The property is in ongoing restoration and has drawn architecture lovers from all over the world who come to see it.

Lots of info and great photos on their site: