After working briefly as a stonemason for the family business, Mies moved to Berlin in 1905. There, he joined the office of Art Noveau architect Bruno Paul, where he learned furniture design. In 1908, he took a job with Peter Behrens; his colleagues in that office included Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Mies went into private practice in 1913, adding the more impressive Rohe, his mother's maiden name. His very early work was inspired by the classicism of Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Even as Mies began to design in an increasingly modern idiom, his work would always retain an underlying classical sensibility in its scale and proportion.

Mies, often in collaboration with Lily Reich, designed furniture for many of his early projects, and most of it is still in production today. In particular, furnishings for the Tugendhat House and the Barcelona Pavilion have become design icons. In addition to his architectural practice, Mies co-edited the journal G, served as vice president of the Deutscher Werkbund, and served as the last director of the Bauhaus prior to World War II.

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