F I E L DWO R K E DI TH FA RN SW O RTH ’S C O U N TRY H O U SE Mar. 31-Dec. 31
BACKGROUND CHECK
Plano, Illinois farnsworthhouse.org
Dr. Edith Farnsworth (left) on the steps of her Ludwig Mies van der Rohe– designed weekend house in 1951, shortly after its completion.
House Call The Farnsworth House, in Plano, Illinois, adds a new layer to its history by exploring the life and times of its pioneering first resident, Dr. Edith Farnsworth, in a nine-month-long exhibition.
WHEN I WAS STUDYING ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY IN GRADUATE SCHOOL AT UC SANTA BARBARA, THE FARNSWORTH HOUSE—A ONE-ROOM WEEKEND RETREAT IN PLANO, ILLINOIS—WAS A CONSTANT PRESENCE IN MY 20TH-CENTURY DESIGN SEMINARS. Completed in 1951 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Farnsworth House has become a modern design icon, on par with watershed projects such as Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. The glass-walled structure revolutionized design by putting its interiors on full display, further cementing Mies in the annals of architectural history, but the client behind the project—the enigmatic Dr. Edith Farnsworth (1903–77)—is often overshadowed by her own home. Now she finally is getting her due as the subject of a new exhibit opening in March, Edith Farnsworth’s Country House, which for
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the first time interprets the home’s interior as Dr. Farnsworth occupied it. Born and raised in Chicago, Farnsworth was an accomplished physician in her early 40s when she met Mies at a dinner party in 1945 and commissioned him to design a getaway house on a plot of land she had purchased in rural Plano, along the Fox River. “Dr. Farnsworth was a risk-taker,” says Nora Wendl, associate professor of architecture and planning at the University of New Mexico whose forthcoming book, Glass, is the culmination of nearly two decades of research on Farnsworth. “She bought an experimental piece of land and hired an experimental architect to design her house on it. Here was a woman who not only made advances in medicine—she was the first to run clinical trials on the synthetic hormone ACTH in treatment of the kidney disease nephritis, and some have argued she should have been nominated for a Nobel Prize for it—but who also desired to be a
COURTESY DAVID DUNLAP
By LAUREN GALLOW
