Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of harmonizing our built environments with nature and humanity.
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe's quote reflects the idea that architecture and urban planning should not only accommodate human activity but also connect with the natural world. By advocating for a 'higher unity' among nature, buildings, and human beings, he suggests that a balanced coexistence can enhance our living experience and promote overall well-being.
In practice
In a speech at an environmental conference.
Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To drown a river beneath its own impounded water, by damming, is to kill what it was and to settle for something else. When the damming happens without good reason . . . then it's a tragedy of diminishment for the whole planet, a loss of one more wild thing, leaving Earth just a little flatter and tamer and simpler and uglier than before.
With no mind, flowers lure the butterfly; With no mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms. Yet when flowers bloom, the butterfly comes; When the butterfly comes, the flowers bloom.
Environmental justice [means that] no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
Every time you dive, you hope you'll see something new - some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn't.
Nature has a great simplicity and therefore a great beauty.
Russia! Russia... Everything in you is open, desolate and level; your squat towns barely protrude in the midst of the plains like dots, like counters; there is nothing to tempt or enchant the onlooker's gaze. But what is this inscrutable, mysterious force that draws me to you?
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