Mies moved from Aachen to Berlin, where he went to work in the office of the architect and interior designer Bruno Paul, who had also designed buildings for the Werkbund Exhibition of 1914. From 1908 to 1912 he was employed in the office of Behrens, where during that period Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier were also employed. Under Behrens, he supervised the construction of the embassy of the German Reich in Saint Petersburg.
Around 1921 Mies changed his surname by adding his mother’s maiden name with the addition of ‘van der’: ‘Mies van der Rohe’.
In response to a call to design the first Berlin skyscraper on a triangular site bounded by the River Spree, the busy shopping street Friedrichstrasse and the railway station, 140 submissions were received, including that of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Mies was fascinated by the American skyscrapers, especially when during construction only the metal skeleton stood. Afterwards, large windows but also a stone infill were applied in those façades. Mies wanted to make the façades entirely of glass, so that the articulation of the storeys would be absent. The triangular floor plan is based on the surroundings and the functions, with the circulation in the centre. But the shape with the points and the recesses clearly points more towards the fantastic and crystalline visions of the expressionist architects. In this, Mies also wanted to study the reflective properties of the mirror glass, the symbol of purity and renewal.
