Rediscovered Mies van der Rohe design completes in Indiana

A glass building designed in 1952 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has completed at Indiana University in Bloomington, more than 50 years after the German-American architect's death.

Now known as the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, the design was adapted for contemporary use from the rediscovered plans by New York architecture studio Thomas Phifer and Partners.

The Eskenazi School was completed using Mies van der Rohe designs more than 70 years old

It was originally commissioned by the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity at the same time Mies van der Rohe was working on the Farnsworth House.

The 60-foot-wide (18-metre) and 140-foot-long (43-metre) building is two storeys with a profile of white steel, characteristic of the 20th-century architect.

White structural steel exteriors were part of the original plans

The top level is wrapped completely in glass and projects out over the concrete walls of the recessed ground-floor structure. The lower level is mostly open, with a central atrium that extends up through the second storey.

Partitioned interiors have both stark white and wooden walls, with floors of grey limestone and white epoxy terrazzo. Select furnishings by Mies van der Rohe and Florence Knoll were included.

A courtyard sits at the building's centre

Some aspects of the original Mies van der Rohe design were updated to conform to code. These include the addition of a staircase, hydraulic elevator, and expanded mechanical room.

To comply with environmental standards, Thomas Phifer and Partners replaced the single-pane glass with insulated, high-performance glass.

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"There can be no greater inspiration for us than to learn and work in a masterpiece by this titan of 20th-century architecture," said Peg Faimon, dean of the Eskenazi School.

The original project was abandoned due to lack of funds, and the designs were forgotten.

Partitions divide the interior into educational spaces

In 2013, an alumnus and former fraternity member Sidney Eskenazi — for whom the building is named — alerted Pi Lambda Phi of the existence of the original plans, which were among the Mies van der Rohe collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

The design was updated with insulated glass

Indiana University plans to host a panel discussion later in 2022 to celebrate the completion of the school, and the work of Mies van der Rohe – one of the best-known architects of the 20th century and the last director of the Bauhaus school.

The photographs are byHadley Fruits, courtesy of the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.

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Rediscovered Mies van der Rohe design being built at Indiana University

A building designed by Mies van der Rohe nearly 70 years ago is under construction at Indiana University in the USA, over 50 years after the 20th-century architect's death.

The steel and glass two-storey building is being built as part of the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design on the university's Bloomington campus.

Architecture firm Thomas Phifer and Partners is overseeing the project and adapted Van der Rohe's 1950s design for contemporary use.

Mies van der Rohe designed the building in 1952

Called the Mies Building for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, the two-storey building will encompass 10,000 square feet (929 square metres).

Its rectangular form will be 60 foot wide (18 metres) and 140 foot long (43 metres) with slim white-painted steel frames holding 10-foot-wide (three-metres) panes of glass.

The lower level will mainly open to the air at the sides, with a square courtyard in the centre that rises up to the first floor.

Van der Rohe, one of the 20th century's best known modernist architects who designed the Seagram Tower and the Barcelona Pavilion, drew up the plans in 1952 for Indiana University's (IU) Alpha Theta chapter of Pi Lambda Phi.

The project was abandoned and the unbuilt design was forgotten about for decades until former IU student and fraternity member Sidney Eskenazi told IU president Michael A McRobbie about the drawings.

The Mies Building for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design opens this year

Van der Rohe's original documents detailing the plans from the building were then located in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The architect had designed the university building at the same time he was working on his well-known residential project Farnsworth House and the IU facility shares many similarities including the white steel frame and the glazed perimeter walls.

"As someone who worked with my grandfather Mies van der Rohe since 1957, I thought I knew all the projects he ever worked on," said the architect's grandson Dirk Lohan.

"But I never heard about this project until IU contacted me about its wish to build this 70-year-old design. After contemplating the request, I and the three other grandchildren concluded this would indeed be a wonderful assertion of Mies's significance as an architect," he added.

"I am convinced that Mies van der Rohe, who died over 50 years ago, would have been pleased to see his iconic edifice ultimately being born."

The Mies Building for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design will open later in 2021.

Van der Rohe, who died in 1969, is one of the world's best-known architects. A pioneer of modernism, he was the third and final director of the Bauhaus until he left Germany for America to escape the Nazis.

More buildings by well-known architects that weren't built until long after the original designer's death include Charles Rennie Mackintosh's House for an Art Lover in Scotland and a house on an island in Lake Mahopac, New York, by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The photographs are by Hadley Fruits courtesy of the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.

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