Mies at Home: From Am Karlsbad to the Tugendhat House (Routledge Research in Architecture)

Mies at Home is a radical rereading of one of the most significant periods in Mies van der Rohe’s career, from the mid- to late 1920s when he was developing his seminal spatial ideas― ideas that would culminate in his celebrated design of the Tugendhat House.

The book examines how Mies’s experience of residing in his apartment, doubling as a studio, in central Berlin had an impact on his spatial concepts. It uncovers one of the most profound but virtually untold aspects of Mies’s development: how his visions of an ideal lifestyle came out of his own living experience and how they, in turn, informed his domestic architecture. Mies’s quest featured two breakthroughs. In the Weissenhof apartment building, he conveyed a flexible and manifold lifestyle that many of the avant-garde artists, including himself, were practicing. Later, in the Tugendhat House, he put forward an alternative way of living that centered on contemplation.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, Mies at Home offers a fresh investigation of the diverse intentions and strategies the architect used in creating his iconic open spaces. It will be an insightful read for researchers, academics, and students in architectural history and theory.

Xiangnan Xiong is an assistant professor at School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She obtained a Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. from the University of Virginia, and a B.Arch. from the South China University of Technology. Xiong’s research focuses primarily on German modern architecture. Her recent publications and teaching probe into the reciprocal interactions between the evolution of dwellings and ways of living.