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.

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.

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.

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

What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things.

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.

Education must lead us from the irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgment. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order. Therefore, let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work.

Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.

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

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.

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

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