“We do not know shapes, but only construction problems. The form is not the objective, but the result of our work. What we intend is precisely to free construction from aesthetic speculation and make it what it should only be, that is, construction. … The art of construction is the will of the time, understood in space… living, variable, new…. The predominance of structural form… with a monumentality… can be defined as a spiritual quality inherent to the structure itself…”
Mies van der Rohe's double professional stage, developed between Germany and the United States, has led this architect to become universally known and recognized.
Its architecture was characterized by the use of materials (iron, concrete and glass) and modern techniques (concept of structure and new conception of space), adapting the architectural language to industrialized society, thus creating a vocabulary of universal forms.
Like nature, architecture had to create basic forms, returning to an elementary construction and configuration, “buildings of flesh and blood”, “substantial” works, with a predominance of structure. Seeking essentialization, “Less is more” minimalism and clarity.
These ideas, initially developed in their country, had an adequate place for development in the USA with the technological advance produced after World War II, where modular construction and standard solutions (reproducible industrial constructions that required less art and more profitability) They established the basic types of the architecture of modern capitalism.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe dejó un legado de obras maestras que ejercieron una enorme influencia en la arquitectura del siglo XX. En la imagen, con la maqueta del Crown Hall de Chicago (1956)
Clase en la Bauhaus de Dessau: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe con los estudiantes (de izquierda a derecha: Annemarie Wilke, Heinrich Neuy, Mies van der Rohe, Hermann Klumpp). Fotografía de Pius Pahl, 1930/1931.