Stephen Bayley

The magnificent fiasco of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House

Instead of the comfortable cottage she’d commissioned, Edith Farnsworth ended up with a costly, impractical modernist masterpiece — and a law suit, says Alex Beam

A magnificent catastrophe: Farnsworth House is one of the finest examples of an architect indulging his vision at the expense of a client. Credit: Alamy
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  • Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth and the Fight over a Modernist Masterpiece

    Alex Beam

    Random House, pp. 352, £22

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