We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Architecture should reflect the objective needs and capabilities of the time, showcasing its greatness.
This quote by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe emphasizes the importance of architecture being both functional and objective, suggesting that when these demands are met, contemporary buildings will embody the potential of their era. He argues that any criticism of modern architecture lacking greatness is misguided if the principles of objectivity and functionality are duly recognized and fulfilled.
Themes
ArchitectureFunctionalityObjectivityGreatnessDesign
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote to discuss architectural principles in a lecture.
More from Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
All quotes →Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
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.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
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.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
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.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
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.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
Similar quotes
Every time you do something, people are going to like it, people are going to hate it. You tend to make the movies on the basis you are making them for the people who are going to like them and not worrying too much about people who don't like them.
Peter JacksonRead
When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.
Twyla TharpRead
That strain again! It had a dying fall: _x000D_ _x000D_ O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound _x000D_ _x000D_ That breathes upon a bank of violets, _x000D_ _x000D_ Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more: _x000D_ _x000D_ 'Tis not so sweet as it was before.
William ShakespeareRead
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
I refuse to go onstage without looking into the eyes and touching everyone I'm working with... we're all in it together, and everyone's an equal part when we're onstage.
Michael ArdenRead
...to be a poet, requires a mythology of the self. The self described is the poet self, to which the daily self (and others) are often ruthlessly sacrificed. The poet self is the real self, the other one is the carrier; and when the poet self dies, the person dies.
Susan SontagRead