A biography for Ludwig Mies van der Rohehasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“I do not think it is an advantage to build planned packaged houses. If you prefabricate a house completely, it becomes an unnecessary restriction.”
“I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.”
“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.”
“It must be understood that every architecture is bound to its time and manifests itself only in vital tasks and through the materials of its age. It has never been otherwise.”
“I thought a lot and I controlled my thoughts in my work - and I controlled my work through my thoughts.”
“Create form out of the nature of the task with the means of our time. This is our work.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.”
“It is no use working with other architects. What can they do? Who does what?”
“Behrens had a great sense of the great form. that was his main interest; and that I certainly understood and learned from him.”
“It is much better to have just one idea, and if the idea is clear, then you can fight for it. That is how you can get things done.”
“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.”
“We made drawings the size of a whole quarter of a room ceiling, which we would then send on to the model makers. I did this every day for two years. Even now I can draw cartouches with my eyes closed.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The building art is man's spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.”
“God is in the details.”
“It must be possible to solve the task of controlling nature and yet simultaneously create a new freedom.”