Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - Architecture as language

Architecture is a language and I think you have to have a grammar in order to have a language. If you are good at that you speak a wonderful prose and if you are really good you can be a poet. Architecture belongs to the epoch and not even to the time as they say, to a real epoch. That is the essence of the epoch and that is the only thing we really can express. You have to construct something. You can make a garage out of it or you can make a cathedral out of it. The same means, the same structural methods we use. My idea was always we have to do something together. We have to pull the whole thing together. We have to destroy these separations between painting and sculpture and architecture and design and so on. It is all one. As I understood that I would not be for fashion in architecture. I would look for more profound principles. Final aim of the Bauhaus for me was architecture. I thought there's only one person I think he could really do it. That is Mies van der Rohe. Fortunately he accepted to take over the institute and he again from his own personal point of view went much stronger into the architectural department and built up a new curriculum for architecture in the institute. But very soon came the end of it. The Nazi destroyed it. He had to move away from Dessau to Berlin and very provisionally only he put it up in an old factory in Berlin and after a very short while the Nazis closed the house and they couldn't go on. Most beautiful, the best building in New York. The Washington Bridge you know that grew. At first I had to to conquer the idea and later I appreciated it as a beauty. Thomas Aquinas he says reason is the first principle of all human work. Under the influence of science and technology I would ask myself you know what can that be you know? What result comes from this fact you know? Can we change it or can we not change it? And the answer of this question you know gave me the direction which I followed. Not what I like. I throw often things out I like very much. They are dear to my heart but when I have a better conviction, a better idea, a clearer idea by that I mean then I follow the clearer idea. A man when he lives progressively very far utopian. Then when he is getting old he is still fresh enough and young enough from the point of view of the others looking at him. Now when you have grasped that once you know then you act accordingly. So I would throw everything out but it's not reasonable. I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.