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" It is much better to have just one idea, and if the idea is clear, then you can fight for it. That is how you can get things done. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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" Simply by not owning three medium-sized castles in Tuscany I have saved enough money in the last forty years on insurance premiums alone to buy a medium-sized castle in Tuscany. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" It must be possible to solve the task of controlling nature and yet simultaneously create a new freedom. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Where can we find greater structural clarity than in the wooden buildings of old? Where else can we find such unity of material, construction and form? here, the wisdom of whole generations is stored. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" I do not oppose form, but only form as a goal. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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

" We refuse to recognize problems of form, but only problems of building. Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result. Form, by itself, does not exist. Form as an aim is formalism; and that we reject. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" It must be understood that every architecture is bound to its time and manifests itself only in vital tasks and through the materials of its age. It has never been otherwise. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Never talk to a client about architecture. Talk to him about his children. That is simply good politics. he will not understand what you have to say about architecture most of the time. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" What would life be like if everybody insisted you must have actually built such-and-such a thing by yourself? I'd be an old man and have nothing to show for the aging. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" After my time in Holland, an inner battle ensued in which I tried to free myself from the influence of Schinkelesque classicism. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 1926 was the most significant year. Looking back, it seems that it was not just a year in the sense of time. It was a year of great realisation or awareness. It seems to me that at certain times of the history of man, the understanding of certain situations ripens. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" When one looks at Nature through the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it takes on a deeper significance than when one stands outside. More of Nature is thus expressed - it becomes part of a greater whole. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" I thought a lot and I controlled my thoughts in my work - and I controlled my work through my thoughts. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" We have to know that life cannot be changed by us. It will be changed. But not by us. We can only guide the things that can cause physical change. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" The unformed is not worse than the over-formed. The former is nothing; the latter is mere appearance. Real form presupposes real life. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" You cannot save wonderful towns. You can only save wonderful towns by building new ones. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Behrens had a great sense of the great form. that was his main interest; and that I certainly understood and learned from him. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Modern buildings of our time are so huge that one must group them. Often the space between these buildings is as important as the buildings themselves. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" It is not possible to go forward while looking back. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" The building art is, in reality, always the spatial execution of spiritual decisions. It is bound to its times and manifests itself only in addressing vital tasks with the means of its times. A knowledge of the times, its tasks, and its means is the necessary precondition of work in the building art. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into architecture. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" We made drawings the size of a whole quarter of a room ceiling, which we would then send on to the model makers. I did this every day for two years. Even now I can draw cartouches with my eyes closed. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" I see in industrialization the central problem of building in our time. If we succeed in carrying out this industrialization, the social, economic, technical, and also artistic problems will be readily solved. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" God is in the details. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe