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" It is a hopeless endeavor to make the form and content of earlier architectural epochs usable for our time; in this, even the strongest artistic talent must fail. We see repeatedly how the outstanding builders fail to achieve an effect because their work does not serve the will of the age. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Work
Achieve
Talent
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" Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together. "
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" What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things. "
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" Generally, I think my work has so much influence because of its reasonableness. "
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" The idea of service leads to community. "
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" It is not possible to go forward while looking back. "
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" I discovered by working with actual glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow, as in ordinary buildings. "
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" Technology is rooted in the past. It dominates the present and tends into the future. It is a real historical movement - one of the great movements which shape and represent their epoch. "
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" The office building is a building for work, organization, lucidity and economy. Light, spacious working rooms, clearly arranged, undivided, only organized according to the pattern of the firm. "
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" The unformed is not worse than the over-formed. The former is nothing; the latter is mere appearance. Real form presupposes real life. "
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" Reinforced concrete buildings are by nature skeletal buildings. No noodles nor armoured turrets. A construction of girders that carry the weight, and walls that carry no weight. That is to say, buildings consisting of skin and bones. "
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" True education is concerned not only with practical goals but also with values. Our aims assure us of our material life, our values make possible our spiritual life. "
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" After my time in Holland, an inner battle ensued in which I tried to free myself from the influence of Schinkelesque classicism. "
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" When it becomes economically possible, building will become montage. "
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" Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form. "
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" Each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it. This is no less true of steel and concrete. "
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" It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs. "
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