Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

“Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into architecture.”

“The demands of the time for objectivity and functionality must be fulfilled. If that clearly happens, then the buildings of our day will convey the greatness of which the age is capable, and only a fool will maintain that they lack it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it. This is no less true of steel and concrete.”

“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.”

“The idea of service leads to community.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. Living, Changing, New. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only such architecture is creative.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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 took me a long time to understand the relationship between ideas and between objective facts. But after I clearly understood this relationship, I didn't fool around with other wild ideas. That is one of the main reasons why I just make my scheme as simple as possible.”

“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.”

“It is not possible to go forward while looking back.”

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

“Modern buildings of our time are so huge that one must group them. Often the space between these buildings is as important as the buildings themselves.”