Go into it in your mind.

Walk up from the lawn to the floating entry patio.

Rise again up the six steps to the covered veranda. See the bubbling creek ahead. Feel the breeze against your face. It is the same breeze that moves the leaves on the trees all around you.

Feel the space flowing off the deck under your feet. Feel the space flowing along the ceiling, rising at the fascia into the sky. It is like an airplane's wing. It rushes past.

Now, turn around, all the way around.

 
Nature is with you.  No matter where you look, nature is with you. It surrounds you.

The house floats in a pool of nature. Nature flows visually into and out of the house, everywhere. Over, under, around and through, the Farnsworth House delivers nature to you.

This is powerful stuff.

 
Mies coined the phrase "less is more".

 
And more or less, Mies is right, but:

There is no escaping nature in this house.

Its purpose is to let nature in. It does this perfectly.

 
But the purpose of a house is also to provide shelter.

 
Shelter includes not only keeping out the rain and the cold. It includes visual shelter.

The Farnsworth House succeeds incredibly and it fails miserably.

 
Try finding the door.

 
The door is more a sliding wall or what would be a wall if it weren't mostly glass.

 
When walls are mostly glass they are not walls. They are voids. Voids are great for visual connection to what is outside. Voids are also great for manipulating the movement of space.

But when an entire house is mostly void, it is mostly void; void of anticipation, void of sequential movement, void of escape or retreat, void of visual shelter. 

 
The house is instantly understood and experienced from the outside or the inside. From the front, from the back, from the side, it is the same. It is void. There are no secrets.

 
It is naked. There is no undressing of it.

You make love to the house and the house makes love to you in six seconds.

Flat.

The expansive experience of time through architecture is voided.

This is its power. This is its weakness.

Most human beings want both connection to nature and escape from nature.

 
While it is powerful medicine to connect easily, seamlessly to the outdoors, it is equally powerful medicine to be able to climb back into the cave.

Dr. Edith Farnsworth found it difficult to live in the house designed by Mies because she could not find her cave. Except for visual shelter in the bathrooms, she found no privacy. She found no escape. She lacked shelter.

Now, come with me to our transparent imaginary cube.

Let's place The Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe where it belongs.

Foundationally, the house is a floater but it doesn't lift up. It squishes spatial energy out and in through its curtains of glass. In the "Y" axis, we place it at about knee level in the Height of Architecture. It treads water poorly. (Note: the house has been repeatedly flooded over the years.)

In the "Z" axis, The Depth of Architecture, the house is certainly not simply façade. It is a transparent house. All of it, every minimalistic detail exists to make it "less" so that nature is "more". While this is a deep philosophical ideal, it falls far short of the need to provide shelter. A house with no secrets is shallow.

In the "X" axis, The Breadth of Architecture, the house falls far to the right, egocentric. Edith Farnsworth adored her architect and allowed his strong signature to sculpt her house and her life in it. Edith got what she asked for but not at all what she wanted. We place the house far to the right: individualistic, egocentric, signature design.

Now, as for the Dimension of Time, of experiential movement through time, the Farnsworth House is a burp, a burp that sounds forever: "Less is More."
 

 

PS ... are you having fun yet? Do you feel a little more equipped to argue architecture?