Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography

Franz Schulze's acclaimed biography is a captivating story of the life, designs, and ideas that made Mies van der Rohe one of the world's most celebrated modern architects. "The most comprehensive book ever written about the master designer and, by any measure, the best . . . This is a genuinely readable book . . . Because no writer has ever before probed into Mies's life at such depth, we have here the first definitive reconstruction of the architect's personal habits, loves, fears, triumphs, loneliness and (in his old age) agonies" Paul Gapp, Chicago Tribune "A herculean, generally successful effort to present Mies's work in terms of both character and context . . . The substance is impressive and much of the material is fresh and revealing . . . This book has obviously been a long labor of love and respect for which no source has been left untouched" Ada Louise Huxtable, New York Times Book Review "Schulze's excellent book . . . is absolutely worthy of its subject. Soundly researched, vividly detailed, and hard to fault critically, it is the most complete survey ever written of Mies'[s] life and works . . . No one else has approached Schulze's achievement in telling the whole story over eight decades" Allan Temko, San Francisco Chronicle Review "Schulze has both the gift of an architectural historian able to render Mies's building innovations and that of a biographer able to paint the humanity and shortcomings of the man" Jane Holtz Kay, Christian Science Monitor "By its broad scope, its eloquent style, and, above all, its prodigious scholarship, this book clearly establishes itself as an indispensable volume for the library of the serious Mies scholar" Louis Rocah, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians "In Schulze's hands Mies is no longer the impassive monolith he has sometimes seemed to be, but a complex human