We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the profound connection between humans and nature, suggesting that perspective influences our understanding of the natural world.
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe suggests that the experience of nature is enhanced when viewed through the architectural lens of the Farnsworth House. This perspective implies that human-made structures can frame and enrich our appreciation of the natural environment, allowing us to see it as part of a larger, interconnected whole rather than in isolation.
Themes
NaturePerspectiveArchitectureConnectionWholeness
In practice
Example use cases
During a nature retreat, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of perspective in appreciating the environment.
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
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.
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
Similar quotes
Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of American farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.
Wendell BerryRead
If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--warm things, kind things, sweet things--help and comfort and laughter--and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.
Frances Hodgson BurnettRead
A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.
Norman MacleanRead
When we walk upon Mother Earth,_x000D_ we always plant our feet carefully_x000D_ because we know the faces of our future generations_x000D_ are looking up at us from beneath the ground._x000D_ we never forget them.
Oren LyonsRead
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.
William Cullen BryantRead
People need to look at wildlife conservation in its totality. As soon as you lose the apex predator, it has harmful consequences right down the food chain.
Thomas KaplanRead