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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

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

" Architecture is always the will of the age conceived as space - nothing else. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the struggle over the foundation of a new architecture confident in its aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Every How is carried by a What. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" In 1912, when I was working in The Hague, I first saw a drawing by Louis Sullivan of one of his buildings. It interested me. "

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

" You can teach students how to work; you can teach them technique - how to use reason; you can even give them a sense of proportions - of order. You can teach them general principles. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" Most of our designs are developed long before there is a practical possibility of carrying them out. I do that on purpose and have done it all my life. I do it when I am interested in something. "

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

" 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

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

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

" 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

" Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" God is in the details. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

" 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

" In addition to the wishes of the client, the position, orientation, and size of the plot also play an important role in determining the final plan of the house. The 'where' and 'how' of the exterior then follows naturally from all of that. "

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

" 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

" 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

" I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that. "

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe