Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe was born in Aachen, Germany. He was trained in his father's stone-carving business before deciding to become an architect and joining Peter Behrens studio in 1908. Behrens was a pioneed modernist and Mies Van der Rohe developed an architectural approach founded on structural techniques. Aesthetically, he was interested in Russian Constructivism and Dutch De Stijl neoplasticism. He became a Director of the Bauhaus and his most famous dictum was'Less is More'. His place in the history of garden design and landscape architecture rests on his design of the German National Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition on Montjuï¿½c. Known today as the Barcelona Pavilion, it is a brilliantly successful composition of paving, walls, roof, water and vegetation. Part of its success, compared to the failure of so many modernist projects, is the sheer delight of the materials: glass, steel, water, vegetation and the finest dressed stone (marble and travertine).
Gardens designed by Van der Rohe, Ludwig Mies