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

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.

Less is more.

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.

God is in the details.

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.

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.

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

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

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.

After my time in Holland, an inner battle ensued in which I tried to free myself from the influence of Schinkelesque classicism.

Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.

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

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

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 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.

Behrens had a great sense of the great form. that was his main interest; and that I certainly understood and learned from him.

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.

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

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.

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.

Every How is carried by a What.

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.

Generally, I think my work has so much influence because of its reasonableness.

I discovered by working with actual glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow, as in ordinary buildings.

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

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 especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I thought a lot and I controlled my thoughts in my work - and I controlled my work through my thoughts.

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.

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.

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.

In addition to the wishes of the client, the position, orientation, and size of the plot also play an important role in determining the final plan of the house. The 'where' and 'how' of the exterior then follows naturally from all of that.

Industrialization of the building trade is a question of material. Hence the demand for a new building material is the first prerequisite.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most of our designs are developed long before there is a practical possibility of carrying them out. I do that on purpose and have done it all my life. I do it when I am interested in something.