“This essay explores the domestic architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe through a feminist lens, indeed the prism of his glass architecture. A close examination of Mies’s drawings for unbuilt houses, as well as his built work, locates a particular design interest of his in placing full-scale states of female figures in his designs. While the Barcelona Pavilion, which performs as both a metaphoric Greek temple and a representation pavilion, operates at the scale of domestic architecture it also serves as a prime example of a larger-than-life statue dwelling in its courtyard, with Georg Kolbe’s 'Alba' (Dawn) animating the space as an esatz goddess. The bust in his Tugendhat house animates this space with similar figural references that disrupt this abstract interior. While Mies envisioned a skyscraper entirely covered in glass as early as 1921 for the Friedrichstrasse competition, it would not be until 1945, after receiving a commission from Dr. Edith Farnsworth to build a glass house for her in Plan, Illinois, that he applied the same idea of transparency to domestic architecture. Much like the statues Mies located in her earlier projects, Dr. Farnsworth sparkles in this house as an object on display, caught in the crystalline prism of its glass walls.”