But the style and aesthetic purity of the house have outlived her. It is an icon - particularly among architects - of how simple, honest and pared-back good modern design should be. It may not have been supremely comfortable to live in, but that's not the point. The point is that it is the living embodiment of an ideal, a beacon exemplary of what a house should look like. The only trouble is, it probably came along half a century too early. Other than the architectural fraternity, it's taken 50 years for the rest of us to catch up with the ideas expressed in this house.
Photo: Peter Cook/View Pictures
The flat roof extends over the patio to create a sheltered area with steps down to the garden. On a 61-acre site surrounded by State park on three sides, the landscape becomes part of the room and, seen from outside, the interiors become part of the landscape.
This is entirely understandable. The Farnsworth House was an experimental, single-skinned dwelling with primitive heating by today's standards. Its modern descendants are light years ahead in terms of comfort and performance. We can now make a modern Farnsworth triple-glazed with transparent metallic coatings fixed to the glass to keep both warmth in and excessive heat out. We can heat it under floor or with computer-designed solar heating. We can super insulate the building. We can, in short, make it a really enjoyable place to live all year round, something that I'm not sure the Farnsworth House ever was.
Photos: Peter Cook/View Pictures
It's taken building technologies 50 years to catch up with the vision of revolutionaries like Mies, to at last make modernism a human-friendly form of architecture. That explains why so may people are now embracing it. The Farnsworth House remains as influential and exemplary as it ever was.
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