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" The building art is man's spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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" The idea of service leads to community. "

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" Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of St. Augustine - 'Beauty is the splendor of Truth.' "

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" Create form out of the nature of the task with the means of our time. This is our work. "

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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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" Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance. "

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" The tendency of our time is wholly oriented toward the secular. The efforts of the mystics will remain episodes. Despite a deepening of our conceptions of life, we will build no cathedrals. "

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. "

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

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

" We do not evaluate the result but the starting point of the creative process. Precisely, this shows whether the form was discovered by starting from life, or for its own sake. That is why I consider the creative process so essential. Life for us is the decisive factor. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" When it becomes economically possible, building will become montage. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" We must understand the motives and forces of our time and analyze their structure from three points of view: the material, the functional, and the spiritual. We must make clear in what respects our epoch differs from others and in what respects it is similar. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" God is in the details. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" I do not think it is an advantage to build planned packaged houses. If you prefabricate a house completely, it becomes an unnecessary restriction. "

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

" 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

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" I hope you will understand that architecture has nothing to do with the inventions of forms. It is not a playground for children, young or old. Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form. "

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

" 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

" 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

" Education must lead us from the irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgment. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order. Therefore, let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" The problem of architecture has always been the same throughout time. Its authentic quality is reached through its proportions, and the proportions cost nothing. In fact, most of them are proportions among things, not the things themselves. Art is almost always a question of proportions. "

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

" I really don't know the Chicago School. You see, I never walk. I always take taxis back and forth to work. I rarely see the city. "

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

" I think that an industrial process is not like a rubber stamp. Everything has to be put together and, as such, should have its own expression. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only this architecture creates. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe