Rumoured Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House movie captivates architects

An unconfirmed report has emerged of a new Hollywood film that will tell the story of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Farnsworth House.

The rumoured film will reportedly star Jeff Bridges as Mies van der Rohe and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the client, Dr Edith Farnsworth, according to Hollywood blogger Roger Friedman.

The Farnsworth House’s executive director Maurice Parrish told ArchitectureAU, “We are aware of the story that’s circulating about plans to make a film about the Farnsworth House, Mies van der Rohe and Dr Edith Farnsworth. However, we have not been contacted by anyone representing the project. We have no knowledge of any specific plans for this film to be made, or of what the involvement of the Farnsworth House will be, if any.

“We are encouraged by how much interest this story is generating. Hopefully, this will lead more people to explore why the Farnsworth House is such an architectural icon and learn more about the relationship between Mies and Dr Farnsworth.”

The pair reportedly had a friendly relationship throughout the design and construction of the house and were rumoured to be romantically involved, which has since been refuted. Parrish told the Chicago Tribune that any storylines of an affair between the two would be “pure speculation.”

Mies van der Rohe designed the all-glass house in 1945 for Dr Farnsworth as a country retreat, located in Plano, Illinois, approximately 90 kilometres west of Chicago. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which today runs the house as a museum, describes the house as “a structure of Platonic perfection against a complementary ground of informal landscape.”

“The Farnsworth House is one of the most significant of Mies van der Rohe’s works, equal in importance to such canonical monuments as the Barcelona Pavilion, built for the 1929 International Exposition and the 1954–58 Seagram Building in New York,” noted the trust.

The house is widely lauded among the architecture profession but was criticized by its owner and in consumer magazines such as House Beautiful.

Farnsworth told the magazine in 1953, “The truth is that in this house with its four walls of glass I feel like a prowling animal, always on the alert. I am always restless. Even in the evening. I feel like a sentinel on guard day and night. I can rarely stretch out and relax […] Mies talks about his ‘free space’: but his space is very fixed. I can’t even put a clothes hanger in my house without considering how it affects everything from the outside. Any arrangement of furniture becomes a major problem, because the house is transparent, like an X-ray.”

The relationship between Mies van der Rohe and Farnsworth broke down led to a protracted legal dispute.

But Mies van der Rohe’s design would ultimately endure. “While subsequent debates and lawsuits sometimes questioned the practicality and livability of its design, the Farnsworth House would increasingly be considered, by architects and scholars alike, to constitute one of the crystallizing and pivotal moments of Mies van der Rohe’s long artistic career,” the National Trust concluded.

The house sits on a flood plain and suffered a devastating flood in 1996, which damaged the interior. Although originally designed to resist flooding, in recent decades, flood events have become more severe and more frequent. The house is currently undergoing a Flood Mitigation Project with three options being considered including elevating the housing, relocating the house and raising the house on hydraulic lifts.

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