Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Quotes

Create form out of the nature of the task with the means of our time. This is our work.

Generally, I think my work has so much influence because of its reasonableness.

The demands of the time for objectivity and functionality must be fulfilled. If that clearly happens, then the buildings of our day will convey the greatness of which the age is capable, and only a fool will maintain that they lack it.

Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value.

Every How is carried by a What.

In 1912, when I was working in The Hague, I first saw a drawing by Louis Sullivan of one of his buildings. It interested me.

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.

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.

You cannot save wonderful towns. You can only save wonderful towns by building new ones.

Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form.

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.

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.

1926 was the most significant year. Looking back, it seems that it was not just a year in the sense of time. It was a year of great realisation or awareness. It seems to me that at certain times of the history of man, the understanding of certain situations ripens.

Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.

After my time in Holland, an inner battle ensued in which I tried to free myself from the influence of Schinkelesque classicism.

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.

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.

I thought a lot and I controlled my thoughts in my work – and I controlled my work through my thoughts.

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.

Industrialization of the building trade is a question of material. Hence the demand for a new building material is the first prerequisite.

What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things.

It must be possible to solve the task of controlling nature and yet simultaneously create a new freedom.

Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.

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.

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 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.

Our utilitarian structures will mature into architecture only when, through their fulfillment of function, they become carriers of the will of the age.

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.

I really don’t know the Chicago School. You see, I never walk. I always take taxis back and forth to work. I rarely see the city.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In addition to the wishes of the client, the position, orientation, and size of the plot also play an important role in determining the final plan of the house. The ‘where’ and ‘how’ of the exterior then follows naturally from all of that.

I do not think it is an advantage to build planned packaged houses. If you prefabricate a house completely, it becomes an unnecessary restriction.

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.

Less is more.

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.

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.

It is not possible to go forward while looking back.

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.

Behrens had a great sense of the great form. that was his main interest; and that I certainly understood and learned from him.

If there really is no new way to be found, we are not afraid to stick with the old one that we found previously. So, I do not make every building different.

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 should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.

Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.

Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into architecture.

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.