Ryder house in Wiesbaden (1923) and the cooperation between Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gerhard Severain

The collaboration between Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the graphic designer, interior decorator and architect Gerhard Severain has previously been little known. Both came from Aachen and studied together at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin in 1906-8. Later Severain would design all the lettering for the German representation at the Barcelona World's Fair, which Mies had supervised, as well as for the first major Mies exhibition in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947. Their most important collaboration, however, is the House Ryder in Wiesbaden, of 1923. The correspondence regarding this project in the Museum of Modern Art's archive consists of 35 postcards, letters and telegrams between the two friends and testifies to the nature of the collaboration in great detail. Severain had received the commission for a single family home from the British citizen Ada Ryder, who lived in Wiesbaden at the time. Since he had no building experience, he asked Mies for help. According to the correspondence, Mies sent all the plans and details from Berlin, many of them executed by his then assistant Carl Gottfried, who also visited the site early in the design process. Mies van der Rohe had just begun to receive recognition in Berlin's Avant-Garde circles with his design for a glass skyscraper at the Friedrichstrasse Railroad Station in 1922 and the Concrete Country House and Office building shown at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1923. Severain repeatedly had to request missing or delayed drawings from Mies, which leaves us with a rather detailed account of the crucial role that Mies played in the design process. The previously unknown house is the first executed building in Mies' oeuvre with a flat roof and other, still somewhat timid, modernistic features, such as corner windows on the second floor, and a rather conspicuous slanted cornice at the upper edge of the facade. The square, compact floor plan shows both a certain similarity with that of its immediate predecessor in Mies' oe uvre, House Eichstaedt in Berlin of 1923, and that of House Riehl of 1908. A central living room/hall occupies the center of the house on the first floor, and opens up to adjacent rooms or alcoves in all four directions, to a library, dining and work areas, as well as a glass enclosed loggia. The staircase to the second floor also opens up into this central space. The economic and political situation in Germany was very difficult at that time, with a record inflation and political unrest making travel across Germany very difficult. Due to Germany's economic crisis, the house remained unfinished by the end of 1923, lacking windows, its plaster coating and the connection to drainage and water systems. It was sold to a new owner in 1926 and finally occupied. In the mid 1980s a hip roof containing additional was added, as well as an indoor swimming pool, changing the appearance of the house substantially. House Ryder occupies a rather important role in Mies van der Rohe's oe uvre: it is his first executed house with a flat roof, and other decidedly modernistic elements. Its open floor plan points at his later spatial arrangements.