Villa Tugendhat

Villa Tugendhat is a reinforced concrete house in Brno, in the present day Czech Republic, built between 1928 and 1930 for the industrialists Fritz and Greta Tugendhat by the architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. Its iron frame eliminated load bearing walls to create open, light filled interiors, including retractable windows that could sink fully into the floor to frame views of Spilberk Castle, a semitranslucent onyx wall imported from Morocco, and advanced climate control systems that were exceptionally rare for their time. The house embodies Mies's principle that less is more and is considered one of the pioneering prototypes of European modernist residential architecture. UNESCO added the villa to the World Heritage List in 2001 in recognition of its influence on twentieth century domestic design.