Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe was born in the year 1886 in Aachen, Germany. His father was a stonemason, and the young Mies underwent training under him, after which, at the age of nineteen, he moved on to Berlin. Berlin being a land of numerous opportunities at the time, Mies was able to train under the 'art nouveau' architect and Interior Designer, Bruno Paul. At the age of twenty, Mies van der Rohe was good enough to receive his own first independent commission to build a house for the famous philosopher, Alois Riehl. By the year 1908, Mies started to work for the architect, Peter Behrens, and although he was technically working for this architect, Mies was also studying the architectural styles and ways of the two famous architects of the time, the Prussian Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Frank Lloyd Wright, and by 1921, Mies was able to open his own studio in Berlin. (Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, 1886-1969: www.designboom.com) .

             This was the time of the World War I, and soon after the War, Mies began to get interested in the study of skyscrapers, and he thereafter designed two novel and innovative steel framed towers that would be encased in glass, one of them being the Friedrichstrasse, in 1921, and even though this design was never converted into a real building, it did succeed in drawing a lot of attention to its creator, and it is often said that this design was the predecessor of the skyscraper designs that would follow in later years. In the year 1927, Mies designed the famous 'German Pavilion' that was displayed at the International Exposition held in Barcelona, and this pavilion had a flat roof that would be supported by columns, and the walls, that had been made of glass and marble, could be moved around whenever the need arose, because of the fact that the walls did not support the structure. Mies van der Rohe later explored this type of seamless flow of spaces without boundaries of any kind in his future creations.