Farnsworth House

The Farnsworth House has this in common with Cannery Row
in Monterey, California: it is a poem, a quality of light, atone, a
habit, a nostalgia, a dream. It has about it, also, an aura of highromance. The die for the romance was cast from the moment
Mies van der Rohe decided to site the house next to the great
black sugar maple - one of the most venerable in the county -
that standsimmediately to the south, within a few yards of the
bank of the Fox River. The rhythms created by the juxtaposition
of the natural elements and the man-made object can be seen
at a glance - tree bendingover house in a gesture of caress, a
never-ending love affair - and felt - when the leaves of the tree
brush the panes of glass on the southern elevation. In summer,
the dense foliage of the sugarmaple shields the house from the
torrid heat and ensures its privacy from the river.
With its glass walls suspended on steel pilot! almost two
metres above the flood plain of the meadow, lifeinside the
house is very much a balance with nature, and an extension of
nature. A change in the season or an alteration of the landscape
creates a marked change in the mood inside the house. With
anelectric storm of Wagnerian proportions illuminating the
night sky and shaking the foundations of the house to their very
core, it is possible to remain quite dry! When, with the melting
of thesnows in spring, the Fox River becomes a roaring torrent
that bursts its banks, the house assumes the character of a
house-boat, the water level sometimes rising perilously close to
the front door. Onsuch occasions, the approach to the house
is by canoe, which is tied up to the steps of the upper terrace.
The overriding quality of the Farnsworth House is one of
serenity. It is a very quiethouse. I think this derives from the
ordered logic and clarity of the whole, from the way in which
the house has been lovingly crafted, and from the sensitive
juxtaposition of fine materials....