Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion of 1929.

History

Joseph Irwin Miller, Columbus, Indiana, businessman and philanthropist, and his wife Xenia Simons Miller commissioned architect Eero Saarinen in 1952 to design their residence. Saarinen’s associate Kevin Roche and architect and interior designer Alexander Girard were significant contributors to the design. The landscape for the 13-acre site was designed by Daniel Urban Kiley, who collaborated with Saarinen beginning in 1946 and continuing through the end of Saarinen’s life, on projects such as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (St. Louis Arch). Construction on the property was underway by 1953 and was completed in 1957. The property, located between a neighborhood of single family residences constructed from the 1930s through the 1950s to the south and a 19th century farmhouse to the north, abuts a main thoroughfare on the east side and has a view downward across the floodplain to the Flatrock River on the west.

Saarinen’s design for the house further developed many of the themes that characterize Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion of 1929: a flat roof with deeply overhanging eaves, walls incorporating large expanses of glass and monumental stone slabs, floors that extend seamlessly to broad terraces, and open, flowing interior spaces. The structure of the house relies on a grid of cruciform steel columns that approximately define the placement of interior walls and that dictate the position of a skylight system which fills the interiors with soft, even light, creating the effect of floating ceiling panels unsupported by adjoining walls. Girard was responsible for many aspects of interior architectural design, including the liberal use of color and pattern in textiles, many of which change seasonally.

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