Conchoidal Chair (Sections)

1937–1938

Emigration to the United States

His modernist designs of glass and steel were not considered suitable for state buildings by the Nazis, and in 1937 or 1938 Mies reluctantly followed Gropius to the United States, where he accepted a residential commission in Wyoming and then an offer to head the department of architecture of the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago.

1940

The Armour Institute becomes IIT: Mies stays

When the Armour Institute merged with the Lewis Institute in 1940 to form the Illinois Institute of Technology, Mies stayed to head its architecture department and was hired to design the new buildings and master plan of the campus; he replaced the traditional École des Beaux-Arts curriculum with a three-step education — from the crafts of drawing and construction through planning skills to the theory of architecture.

1940

Lora Marx, his companion to the end

From 1940 until his death the artist Lora Marx (1900–1989) was his primary companion.

1944

Becomes a US citizen

He became a US citizen, completing his severance from his native Germany; his thirty years as an American architect reflect a more structural, pure approach toward his goal of a new architecture for the twentieth century.

1946–1951

The Farnsworth House and the dispute with the client

He designed and built for Dr Edith Farnsworth a weekend retreat outside Chicago — a glass pavilion by the Fox River with a white steel frame and all-glass walls, raised six feet above a floodplain. The house took a while to be built because of underlying issues between Mies and Edith Farnsworth — a complex relationship, partly personal and partly about the design — and back-and-forth legal disputes followed.

15 October – 8 November 1947

A Theo van Doesburg exhibition in Chicago

Mies promised Nelly van Doesburg, the widow of Theo van Doesburg, that he would help organise an exhibition of her late husband’s work in Chicago; it took place from 15 October to 8 November 1947.