Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

No other men have succeeded as have Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe in building complete systems.
Their concentration is such that the nature of their systems is implicit even in their fragment. One has, for example, a perfectly clear notion of the sort of city and the sort of society envisaged by Mies van der Rohe, even though he has never said much about it. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Miesian city is implicit in the Mies chair.
Le Corbusier's system is of course more familiar because of his constant reiteration of the part even his smallest objects play in his general scheme of things. And what validates both their systems is that they are conceived in the terms of the technology of their time and that both men have a capacity for rejection and reconsideration in the face of changing circumstances.

Peter Smithson, from a “Footnote on the Seagram Building”, published in the Architectural Review, December 1958

More info: Kragstuhlmuseum / TECTA-Archiv Lauenförde