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Reviewed in archidose as part of their Favourite Books of 2009 feature

As the cover photo to this double issue of the Spanish architectural magazine 2G attests, when one thinks of the houses of Mies van der Rohe, the Farnsworth House immediately springs to mind. Overlooking the Fox River near Chicago, the composition of glass, steel, travertine and wood is a house most distinctive, a museum piece notable for its transparency, purity of form and structure, and ability to attract architects from all over the world. Philip Johnson may have built his Glass House first, but the detachment of Mies's design from the ground signals something much stronger than Johnson's at-grade solution. Mies would follow the Farnsworth House with two more single-family residences, but it was only in his unbuilt Resor House designed to span a ravine in Jackson Hole, Wyoming -- a project predating Farnsworth by about ten years -- where the framing and flattening of nature achieves its fullest potential. These two projects, in their distance from the earth, turn architecture into a canvas and nature into paint, a phenomenon that architects still strive for today in the numerous glass houses found in all corners of the globe.

How Mies managed to reach the apparent pinnacle of the Farnsworth House is a voyage documented and retold endlessly, though a focus on his residential oeuvre is nevertheless incomplete. Billed as the first collection of all his houses built in Germany and the United States, this beautifully photographed and carefully documented double issue illuminates the movement from German beginning to glass houses that can be seen as extensions of the high-rises he is known for in his late career. This illumination is aided by all three contributors to this 2G, editor Mois�s Puente's house descriptions and essay, Beatriz Colomina's particularly eye-opening essay, and the newly-commissioned photos by Hans-Christian Schink. The latter is marked by bright whites and dark darks, but the contrast helps in giving depth to the shadows and make the less-than-ideal conditions of shoots like the Farnsworth House's gray autumn day become a positive and result in magnificent photos.

Colomina's essay elevates the exhibition projects and competitions of Mies's early years as key to his development as an architect, including the media's role in shaping his perceived identity. Mies did not start as an avant-garde architect, but he skillfully became one via the above and his relationship with art collectors, of which he was one. To have all of Mies's houses in one bound collection -- including unbuilt projects in the magazine's nexus -- is beyond convenient. It is well-crafted and valuable investigation into the continuity (and discontinuity) of the master's architecture as read through the all-important building type of the single-family house.