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Visitor Center - an addition to the Farnsworth house historic site
Plano,IL
In response to the history of the site and past owner Peter Palumbo’s sculpture gardens that once accompanied the Farnsworth building, the concept behind the visitor center and site design is one of curating an art walk to lead visitors through the landscape. Each new sculpture within the experience has a designed view and approach. The culminating sculptural experience is the Farnsworth building, left in its current location and in the flood plain as is. Due to this decision entropy will, over time, become part of the walk experience.
This building is no longer a home but an inhabitable piece of art meant to be experienced in the location it was first built. Change is part of a building’s life. We can not continually rearrange this building to attempt to keep the exact surroundings it once had. It will never have anything exactly the way it was when Mies first designed the modern masterpiece.
Similarly, the urge for restoration is one that should be left alone with this building, other than necessary means to keep visitors safe. Architectural critic and philosopher John Ruskin “deemed restoration wrong because it was impossible to recreate the original buildings since the restorers did not possess the feelings behind the original creation. Thus, any restoration destroyed the building and its integrity.”[1] This thought should be taken into consideration with exception to keeping the building safe for visitors through obvious support. The building is a piece of history and should be left to age similarly to that of ancient architecture.

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[1] Jackson, Melanie Lynn. "THE PRINCIPLES OF PRESERVATION: THE INFLUENCES OF VIOLLET, RUSKIN AND MORRIS ON HISTORIC PRESERVATION." Accessed April 26, 2016.https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/9069/Jackson_okstate_0664M_1794.pdf?sequence=1.

In relation to this monumental piece of architectural art, the essence of the visitor center is one of humble and practical design. Miesian design concepts, in particular referencing the partitioned spaces of the Barcelona Pavilion and Farnsworth materiality condition guests for their upcoming experience. The building acts as a preparatory space through historical education as well as tactical and experiential education of Mies’s design theories.
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