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" The idea of service leads to community. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" You can use up all the slums for new development. In all the cities of the world, there are large areas of these. Also, you can avoid the spread of these silly suburban houses. Chicago has thousands of them all over the place. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" If there really is no new way to be found, we are not afraid to stick with the old one that we found previously. So, I do not make every building different. "

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

" 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

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Less is more. "

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

" It is no use working with other architects. What can they do? Who does what? "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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

" Cheese was the staple. Bread you brought from home. The Schnaps came later. At the end of the week when people got paid, that's when you got your Schnaps, lots of it, five Pfennige a shot. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Industrialization of the building trade is a question of material. Hence the demand for a new building material is the first prerequisite. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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

" 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

" 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

" Just as we acquaint ourselves with materials, and just as we must understand functions, we must become familiar with the psychological and spiritual factors of the day. No cultural activity is possible otherwise, for we are dependent on the spirit of our time. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" If one limits to developing only the kitchen and bathroom as standardized rooms because of their installation, and then also decides to arrange the remaining living area with movable walls, I believe that any justified living requirements can be met. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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