Quotes by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.”

“God is in the details.”

“A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.”

“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 proportio...”

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

“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.”

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

“Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only this architecture creates.”

“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 ...”

“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...”

“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 kno...”

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

“I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.”

“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.”