Google has designed an extremely simple Doodle in honor of German-born architect and educator Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who is linked with the saying “less is more.”
Google’s colored letters appear within the windows of a rendering of one of Mies’ masterworks, the S.R. Crown Hall at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, built between 1950-56.
Born Ludwig Mies on this date in 1886, he later melded his mother’s maiden name (Rohe) with his own. His early career was spent designing office buildings, apartment buildings, houses – even furniture – all in Germany.
He was director of the Bauhaus, an experimental art and design school, before the Nazis forced the school to close in the early 1930s. A year after a historic meeting with Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies emigrated to the United States in 1938 to head the Armour Institute, which later became the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Mies’ buildings emphasized open space, minimalism, and modern architecture. The Seagram Building in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington D.C., and the National Gallery in Berlin, Germany, are among his most famous creations.
Mies died of esophageal cancer in 1969. Here’s how the Mies van der Rohe Society summed up his designs and legacy:
Mies’ buildings, beyond merely affecting our lives, endow them with greater significance and beauty. His buildings radiate the confidence, rationality, and elegance of their creator and, free of ornamentation and excess, confess the essential elements of our lives. In our time, where there is no limit to excess, Mies’ reductionist approach is as pertinent as ever. As we reduce the distractions and focus on the essential elements of our environment and ourselves, we find they are great, intricate, and beautiful. Less is more.
Google has previously honored other architects with Doodles, most recently Sir George Gilbert Scott last July.
Related reading
IWD 2018: Eight SEO ladies give their advice on being a woman in search
In honor of International Women’s Day 2018, we wanted to highlight the perspectives of women working in SEO, and how – if at all – they think gender affects the industry and the work that they do. Search Engine Watch spoke to eight successful ladies in SEO to find out their thoughts and advice on being a woman in SEO.
Ranker: How to make a Google algorithm-proof website
Any SEO or webmaster who has ever had a website affected by a Google algorithm change – or feared being affected by one – has probably wished that they could find a way to make their website “algorithm-proof”. One site believes it has found the formula.
Mystified by martech? Introducing the ClickZ Buyers Guide series
Search Engine Watch sister site ClickZ has just launched the first report in its new series of buyers guides, which aims to to disentangle and demystify the martech landscape for marketers.
Pricesearcher: The biggest search engine you’ve never heard of
If you ask Siri to tell you the cost of an iPad near you, she won’t be able to provide you with an answer, because she doesn’t have the data. Until now, a complete view of prices on the internet has never existed. Enter Pricesearcher, a search engine that has set out to solve this problem by indexing all of the world’s prices.
