Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form.Collection: Architecture
Architecture is always the will of the age conceived as space - nothing else. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the struggle over the foundation of a new architecture confident in its aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.Collection: Architecture
Less is more.Collection: Architecture
Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.Collection: Architecture
I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.Collection: Art
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.Collection: Space
Education must lead us from the irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgment. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order. Therefore, let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work.Collection: Chance
Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into architecture.Collection: Technology
Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.Collection: Architecture
A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.Collection: Famous
Simply by not owning three medium-sized castles in Tuscany I have saved enough money in the last forty years on insurance premiums alone to buy a medium-sized castle in Tuscany.Collection: Money
God is in the details.Collection: God
True education is concerned not only with practical goals but also with values. Our aims assure us of our material life, our values make possible our spiritual life.Collection: Education
Our utilitarian structures will mature into architecture only when, through their fulfillment of function, they become carriers of the will of the age.Collection: Architecture
Modern buildings of our time are so huge that one must group them. Often the space between these buildings is as important as the buildings themselves.Collection: Space
I hope you will understand that architecture has nothing to do with the inventions of forms. It is not a playground for children, young or old. Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit.Collection: Hope
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. Living, Changing, New. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only such architecture is creative.Collection: Space
Never talk to a client about architecture. Talk to him about his children. That is simply good politics. he will not understand what you have to say about architecture most of the time.Collection: Architecture
What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things.Collection: Beauty
Technology is rooted in the past. It dominates the present and tends into the future. It is a real historical movement - one of the great movements which shape and represent their epoch.Collection: Technology
Technology is far more than a method, it is a world in itself. As a method, it is superior in almost every respect. But only where it is left to itself, as in gigantic structures of engineering, there technology reveals its true nature.Collection: Respect
We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.Collection: Nature
It must be understood that every architecture is bound to its time and manifests itself only in vital tasks and through the materials of its age. It has never been otherwise.Collection: Architecture
The problem of architecture has always been the same throughout time. Its authentic quality is reached through its proportions, and the proportions cost nothing. In fact, most of them are proportions among things, not the things themselves. Art is almost always a question of proportions.Collection: Architecture
Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.Collection: Architecture
Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of St. Augustine - 'Beauty is the splendor of Truth.'Collection: Beauty
It must be possible to solve the task of controlling nature and yet simultaneously create a new freedom.Collection: Freedom
The building art is, in reality, always the spatial execution of spiritual decisions. It is bound to its times and manifests itself only in addressing vital tasks with the means of its times. A knowledge of the times, its tasks, and its means is the necessary precondition of work in the building art.Collection: Knowledge
Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only this architecture creates.Collection: Architecture
It is not possible to go forward while looking back.
Nature, too, shall live its own life. We must beware not to disrupt it with the color of our houses and interior fittings. yet we should not attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together into a higher unity.
Form as a goal always ends in formalism. For this striving is directed not towards an inside, but towards an outside. But only a living inside has a living outside.
It is much better to have just one idea, and if the idea is clear, then you can fight for it. That is how you can get things done.
The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows.
Each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it. This is no less true of steel and concrete.
We must understand the motives and forces of our time and analyze their structure from three points of view: the material, the functional, and the spiritual. We must make clear in what respects our epoch differs from others and in what respects it is similar.
I see in industrialization the central problem of building in our time. If we succeed in carrying out this industrialization, the social, economic, technical, and also artistic problems will be readily solved.
Where can we find greater structural clarity than in the wooden buildings of old? Where else can we find such unity of material, construction and form? here, the wisdom of whole generations is stored.
Every How is carried by a What.
When one looks at Nature through the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it takes on a deeper significance than when one stands outside. More of Nature is thus expressed - it becomes part of a greater whole.
We do not evaluate the result but the starting point of the creative process. Precisely, this shows whether the form was discovered by starting from life, or for its own sake. That is why I consider the creative process so essential. Life for us is the decisive factor.
The idea of service leads to community.
I do not oppose form, but only form as a goal.
The building art is man's spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.
Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value.
I discovered by working with actual glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow, as in ordinary buildings.
Generally, I think my work has so much influence because of its reasonableness.
I thought a lot and I controlled my thoughts in my work - and I controlled my work through my thoughts.
We refuse to recognize problems of form, but only problems of building. Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result. Form, by itself, does not exist. Form as an aim is formalism; and that we reject.
When it becomes economically possible, building will become montage.