Mies served in the German army during World War I. After the war he began to build in an even more Avant-Garde style, culminating in his design for one of the buildings for the Weissenhof Estate in 1926. In 1929, Mies created the pavilion for Germany at the International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain; set on a wide, diagonal axis, the structure was built out of rich materials (such as golden onyx and Tinos verde antico marble) that would become a hallmark of his style. In 1930, Mies was appointed as architectural director of the Dessau Bauhaus. 

With the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Mies immigrated to the United States in 1937. He soon moved to Chicago, where he began teaching at the Illinois Institute of Architecture. Mies designed twenty new buildings for the campus and his teaching influenced a generation of American architects, including Kevin Roche and Dirk Lohan, that would redefine the structures of modernism. In 1952, Mies finished the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, which was the culmination of his famed architectural one-liner of “less is more” with its clear glass walls and thin steel columns. In 1954, he was invited by Phillis Lambert to plan a building for the Seagram Corporation on Park Avenue in New York City. Working together with Philip Johnson on this structure, Mies created the ultimate symbol of corporate modernism with the building’s expensive bronze-cladding and central plaza inspired by the work of Biedermeier architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. His final project was for the New National Gallery in West Berlin, which was finished in 1968. Mies van der Rohe died in 1969, and his legacy transformed the landscape of America and Europe. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others. 

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