Plans to protect Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House by placing it on a hydraulic lift that can be deployed in case of flooding are proceeding at a rate that has taken even the plans’ supporters by surprise.
The lift will cost as much as $3 million, according to Robert Silman, a structural engineer whose firm has done preliminary design work on the system. But Silman says that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns the Farnsworth House, “has a potential donor who is very interested, and we understand that the donor’s decision will be based on public acceptance.” That public acceptance could emerge as early as this month. On May 29 and 30, the National Trust will hold two town hall meetings, one in Chicago (in Mies’s Crown Hall) and one in Plano, Illinois, site of the Farnsworth House, designed in 1945 and completed in 1951.
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