Top 105 Quotes & Sayings by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only this architecture creates.
Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of St. Augustine - 'Beauty is the splendor of Truth.'
I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.
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.
Every How is carried by a What.
Less is more.
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.
Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into architecture.
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.
It is a hopeless endeavor to make the form and content of earlier architectural epochs usable for our time; in this, even the strongest artistic talent must fail. We see repeatedly how the outstanding builders fail to achieve an effect because their work does not serve the will of the age.
Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form.
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.
It took me a long time to understand the relationship between ideas and between objective facts. But after I clearly understood this relationship, I didn't fool around with other wild ideas. That is one of the main reasons why I just make my scheme as simple as possible.
You can use up all the slums for new development. In all the cities of the world, there are large areas of these. Also, you can avoid the spread of these silly suburban houses. Chicago has thousands of them all over the place.
Most of our designs are developed long before there is a practical possibility of carrying them out. I do that on purpose and have done it all my life. I do it when I am interested in something.
The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows.
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.
I do not think it is an advantage to build planned packaged houses. If you prefabricate a house completely, it becomes an unnecessary restriction.
Cheese was the staple. Bread you brought from home. The Schnaps came later. At the end of the week when people got paid, that's when you got your Schnaps, lots of it, five Pfennige a shot.
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.
After my time in Holland, an inner battle ensued in which I tried to free myself from the influence of Schinkelesque classicism.
You can teach students how to work; you can teach them technique - how to use reason; you can even give them a sense of proportions - of order. You can teach them general principles.
A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.
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.
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.
Create form out of the nature of the task with the means of our time. This is our work.
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.
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.
We made drawings the size of a whole quarter of a room ceiling, which we would then send on to the model makers. I did this every day for two years. Even now I can draw cartouches with my eyes closed.
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.
The idea of service leads to community.
You cannot save wonderful towns. You can only save wonderful towns by building new ones.
Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.
Reinforced concrete buildings are by nature skeletal buildings. No noodles nor armoured turrets. A construction of girders that carry the weight, and walls that carry no weight. That is to say, buildings consisting of skin and bones.
We have to know that life cannot be changed by us. It will be changed. But not by us. We can only guide the things that can cause physical change.
If one limits to developing only the kitchen and bathroom as standardized rooms because of their installation, and then also decides to arrange the remaining living area with movable walls, I believe that any justified living requirements can be met.
It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs.
When it becomes economically possible, building will become montage.
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.
Generally, I think my work has so much influence because of its reasonableness.
What would life be like if everybody insisted you must have actually built such-and-such a thing by yourself? I'd be an old man and have nothing to show for the aging.
It is no use working with other architects. What can they do? Who does what?
We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
It is not possible to go forward while looking back.
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.
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.
Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that.
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.
It must be possible to solve the task of controlling nature and yet simultaneously create a new freedom.
The building art is man's spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.
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.
I do not oppose form, but only form as a goal.
The office building is a building for work, organization, lucidity and economy. Light, spacious working rooms, clearly arranged, undivided, only organized according to the pattern of the firm.
God is in the details.
What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things.
Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value.
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.
I think that an industrial process is not like a rubber stamp. Everything has to be put together and, as such, should have its own expression.
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