Quotes from 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.

The long path from material through function to creative work has only one goal: to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time.

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.

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.

Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms.

Our utilitarian structures will mature into architecture only when, through their fulfillment of function, they become carriers of the will of the age.

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.

Form as a goal always ends in formalism. For this striving is directed not towards an inside, but towards an outside. But only a living inside has a living outside.

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.

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

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

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.

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.

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

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

A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.

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.

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.

There's no place to put the furniture. I was born in a little village in Germany. I can dream and imagine this new world, but I can't live in it.

No design is possible until the materials with which you design are completely understood

A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.

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

The individual is losing significance; his destiny is no longer what interests us.