Who’s your favorite architect? What’s your favorite building?

Reading these two questions on a now dead architecture blog made me stuble, and I had to think for a few minutes to decide.

My favourite building is the Case Study House #22, aka Stahl House, designed by Pierre Koenig (details, PDF).

Its design—the simplicity, the minimalism, the constraint in materials—keep stunning me, and notice how perfectly it fits into the environment (it has to, the location made it tricky to build anything there). Just imagine the look of LA at night! (You don’t have to, see picture 3 in above PDF.) I’d settle there in an instant. I think it was seeing this house (just in the book) that sparked my interest in contemporary architecture.

So much for the building, who’s my favourite architect? Pierre Koenig surely ranks high, but after careful consideration Mies van der Rohe wins. I’m not a big fan of his skyscapers (actually skyscapers in general), but his houses—especially the Farnsworth House—are truly timeless and just awesome. The structure and arrangement are perfect.