Quotes from 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Every How is carried by a What.

We must have order, allocating to each thing its proper place and giving to each thing is due according to its nature.

Architecture has the power to create order out of unholy confusion.

God dwells in the details.

Architecture is a language. When you are very good, you can be a poet

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

It is better to be good than to be original.

Architecture wrote the history of the epochs and gave them their names.

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

The idea of service leads to community.

When it becomes economically possible, building will become montage.

First you have to learn to do something, then you can go out and do it.

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.

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

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

It is not possible to go forward while looking back.

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.