Mies in the Czech Republic & Germany. A Unique Look at the Great Architect. With the Mies van der Rohe Society. 9 Days.
For 63 years, the German-born architect Mies van der Rohe sought to change the way Americans and Europeans integrated the external world with modern architecture. He would come to be known for his steel-and-glass, "skin-and-bones" building design embodied in such iconic structures as the Seagram Building in New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and the twin apartment towers on Chicago's lakefront, among many others.
But before Mies designed skyscrapers (and before he emigrated to Chicago and became an American citizen), he left behind a European legacy that demands close examination.
R. Crusoe & Son has created a once-in-a-lifetime tour to the Czech Republic and Germany during which we do just that: take a close look at the earlier work of Mies van der Rohe. The tour is sponsored by the Chicago-based Mies van der Rohe Society, and it includes unique and unusual visits not available to the general public. If architecture interests you, or if you think you ought to know more about the life and times of Mies (you should), please join us for this marvelous nine-day tour departing in May 2012.
Over the pond to the Czech Republic. The town of Brno, specifically, to see Villa Tugendhat, a modernist icon designed by Mies in 1930. Tour the villa in the company of the lead restoration architect.
Then into Germany. En route to Berlin, pause at Dresden's Green Vault, home to Saxony treasures.
Vibrant Berlin is one of our favorite European cities. Tour the Neue Nationalgalerie, Mies's celebrated "temple of light and glass."
Mies was the Bauhaus School's last director. We further acquaint ourselves with the architect and his colleagues at the Bauhaus Archive/Museum of Design.
There's much more in Berlin: Mies's Lemke House. A Helmut Jahn-designed apartment.The renovated Reichstag, with lunch on the roof terrace. Fabulous Museum Island. Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum. Checkpoint Charlie. A cruise on the Spree River. A screening of the film "Goodbye Lenin."
Then into Potsdam, where the Babelsberg neighborhood boasts a number of Mies-designed homes. We also tour the Dutch and Russian quarters of town, Schloss Sanssouci, and Cecilienhof, where Churchill, Stalin, and Truman met to redraw the map of Europe in 1945.
Then back to Berlin and home, with clear insight into the genius of Mies van der Rohe.
To request an itinerary for this journey (and others), click here.