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On one side, the Glass House, transparent and entirely self-possessed, a work of modernist daring framed in steel and inspired, as Johnson was only too happy to admit, by the designs of his hero, the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Then again, for some delightful reason, quicos are also the staple bar snack at Travelle, a posh lounge on the second floor of Chicago's Langham Hotel, which is housed in a monolithic Mies van der Rohe skyscraper overlooking the Chicago River.

He denigrated a planned Ludwig Mies van der Rohe skyscraper as “yet another giant glass stump, better suited to downtown Chicago than the City of London.”

His fascination with architecture led him to make films about some of its stars, including Louis Kahn, Richard Meier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry.

He was less enamored of the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose glass boxes, he told Eugenia Cook of The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1984, have “not been satisfying to the human psyche.”