Brno Chair - Flat Bar

The Tugendhat House, often considered to be Mies van der Rohe’s defining residential work, is the summation of his ideas incorporated at every level of the design. Architectural historian Peter Blake explains in his book Master Builders: “As in every one of his designs, from skyscrapers to dining chairs, Mies reduces each object to its essential elements, and then refined each detail to a point of almost breathtaking beauty and eloquence. There was nothing in this house that did not reflect this process of distillation to the point of utter perfection — not a window mullion, not a heating pipe, not a lighting fixture, not an ashtray.”

While there were 24 Tubular Brno Chairs in the Tugendhat House, there was only one Flat Bar Brno chair in master bedroom and, unlike the tubular version, the design was not subsequently put into production. In 1958 Phillip Johnson requested that Knoll produce the flat bar Brno Chair for use in his design of the Four Seasons restaurant. After making a few slight adjustments, including added cushioning — all with the approval of Mies — Knoll reintroduced the chair in 1958 and continues to produce each chair to Mies’ exacting standards, thanks to a collaboration with the Mies van der Rohe Archives at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
 

Regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of architecture, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s ‘less-is-more’ approach to design was the gold standard for many generations of modern architecture. His legendary career started humbly at his father’s stonemasonry business, giving him an early appreciation of material and structure. From there he apprenticed with furniture designer Bruno Paul in Berlin before joining the office of Peter Behrens, an architect and painter at the forefront of the modern movement.

In 1912, Mies established his own office in Berlin. Through furniture, residential projects and extraordinary, yet unrealized concepts for skyscrapers, he gained recognition as a leader of the German modern movement. As such, he was selected to design the German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona.

Mies served as Vice President of the Deutsher Werkbund and Director of the Bauhaus from 1930 until it closed in 1933. He immigrated to the United States in 1938 to become the director of architecture at the Armour Institute (later the Illinois Institute of Technology). From his Chicago-based practice, Mies designed a portfolio of buildings that changed the face of American institutional architecture ― the most notable examples being the IIT campus and the Seagram Building in New York.