Court House project (Interior perspective)
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
American, born Germany. 1886–1969
after 1938
An interior perspective drawing for a courthouse by Mies van der Rohe, rendered in graphite with a cut-and-pasted reproduction of a sculpture to test how a single artwork and a minimal structural frame organize a civic interior.
What strikes you is the vast, quiet sheet pierced by a low, horizontal plane of finely drawn glass and slender columns, against which a small, dark sculptural figure is pasted—its mass and texture startlingly human amid the precise, airy geometry.
The study distills Mies’s modernist credo—clarity, openness, and the careful placement of objects within space—and illustrates how his spare language of glass and steel helped define the International Style’s approach to scale, transparency, and the integration of art in public architecture.
Medium
Graphite and cut-and-pasted reproduction (of unidentified scultpure) on illustration board
Dimensions
30 x 40" (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Mies van der Rohe Archive, gift of the architect
Accession
994.1965
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
