Rethinking Mies: Farnsworth House as a case study

An opportunity to present the Modelpan panel to an audience of Turkish architects led to the idea of using it as an element for the redesign of one of the ‘monuments’ of modern American architecture. Nearly a century following the beginning of the modern movement, this operation represents an occasion to reflect on the limits of modernist utopias and the current need for careful architectural designs in terms of a correct relationship with the environment. The decision to intervene in a building as iconic as Farnsworth House, designed and constructed by Mies van der Rohe, was by no means a random choice and not merely provocative. Designed with a view to producing a controversial form of architecture, we feel it must continue to function as a ‘short-circuit’ in terms of architectural innovation and as a workshop with respect to the domestic environment created and its relationship with the environment.