Franz Schulze's acclaimed biography is a captivating story of the life, designs, and ideas that made Mies van der Rohe one of the world's most celebrated modern architects.
"The most comprehensive book ever written about the master designer and, by any measure, the best....This is a genuinely readable book....Because no writer has ever before probed into Mies's life at such depth, we have here the first definitive reconstruction of the architect's personal habits, loves, fears, triumphs, loneliness and (in his old age) agonies."--Paul Gapp, Chicago Tribune
"A herculean, generally successful effort to present Mies's work in terms of both character and context....The substance is impressive and much of the material is fresh and revealing....This book has obviously been a long labor of love and respect for which no source has been left untouched."--Ada Louise Huxtable, New York Times Book Review
"Schulze's excellent book...is absolutely worthy of its subject. Soundly researched, vividly detailed, and hard to fault critically, it is the most complete survey ever written of Mies'[s] life and works....No one else has approached Schulze's achievement in telling the whole story over eight decades."--Allan Temko, San Francisco Chronicle Review
"Schulze has both the gift of an architectural historian able to render Mies's building innovations and that of a biographer able to paint the humanity and shortcomings of the man."--Jane Holtz Kay, Christian Science Monitor
"By its broad scope, its eloquent style, and, above all, its prodigious scholarship, this book clearly establishes itself as an indispensable volume for the library of the serious Mies scholar."--Louis Rocah, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
"In Schulze's hands Mies is no longer the impassive monolith he has sometimes seemed to be, but a complex human being whose varying moods reflected and affected the vicissitudes of his life and work....Yet, in this model architectural biography, [Schulze] also knows and brilliantly demonstrates the integral nexus of architecture and life."--Thomas S. Hines, Progressive Architecture
"Franz Schulze's Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography captivates from the very first paragraph....The writer is a skillful storyteller. In his hands, Mies's life acquires the intensity and dramatic progression of a novel."--Juan Pablo Bonta, Design Book Review
"A revelation....The man who emerges from its pages is not cold and rational but exuberant and illogical."--Donald Davis, Newsweek
"[A] readable, well-researched and sympathetic biography."--Mark Girouard, Washington Post Book World
"The standard life of Mies for some time to come."--William H. Jordy, The New Criterion
"[A] distinguished and eloquent biography."--Paul Goldberger, New York Times
"[A] magnificent biography."--Diana Ketcham, The Oakland Tribune

本书是中国建筑工业出版社“西方现代主义建筑大师理论研究丛书——秩序与建造系列”的第一本。笔者从掌控密斯建造体系之“匀质秩序”出发，逐一探讨密斯从巴塞罗那德国馆到柏林国家美术馆新馆其间的重要代表作品。将匀质秩序对密斯建造体系不断发展、提升的演进脉络呈现出来，从而将密斯毕生建筑探索的内在奥义揭示出来。 密斯终其一生专一于匀质网格秩序与相关建构要素的整合和博弈以达成他所追求之“清晰的建造”。此间，与密斯缠斗最为激烈的非表皮与结构莫属，密斯在对其不断的离析和整合中开创了现代主义中最为铿锵有力的基于钢、玻璃和石材的“营造法式”。然而，匀质秩序体系的“密不透风”从根本上排斥了柱、墙等实体元素的介入，匀质网格在成就了密斯的同时也是其毕生建构探索的局限所在。