When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus School in the 1930s, Mies van der Rohe chose to stay. He believed, he said, in “something more noble than politics, the ruthless pursuit of the perfect modern building, the true heir, he thought, to Greek temples and gothic cathedrals – buildings constructed on earth in order to escape it. These were cathedrals for the new religion, commerce and industry – factories, office blocks, skyscrapers and apartment towers, the modern urban landscape, whose architecture had yet to be invented. The form lay out there for him to discover.”