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 aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Truth Space Power

God is in the details.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

God Christmas Tail

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Car Art Architecture

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Good Art Want

Less is more.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Architecture More Less Is More

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Famous Design Why

It is not possible to go forward while looking back.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

War While T

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Nature Uses Use

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Which Want Use

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Space Architecture Will

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Nature Great Art

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ways Way Things

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 Rohe

Nature Car Weight

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. Living, Changing, New. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only such architecture is creative.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Space Architecture Yesterday

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 aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Truth Space Power

The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Will Who Use

The building art is man's spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Men Art Wit

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Technology Men Architecture

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Time Politics Good

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

War Nature Life

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 Rohe

Work Time Men

It is no use working with other architects. What can they do? Who does what?

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

True education is concerned not only with practical goals but also with values. Our aims assure us of our material life, our values make possible our spiritual life.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The idea of service leads to community.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Form as a goal always ends in formalism. For this striving is directed not towards an inside, but towards an outside. But only a living inside has a living outside.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

We must understand the motives and forces of our time and analyze their structure from three points of view: the material, the functional, and the spiritual. We must make clear in what respects our epoch differs from others and in what respects it is similar.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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 our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

We made drawings the size of a whole quarter of a room ceiling, which we would then send on to the model makers. I did this every day for two years. Even now I can draw cartouches with my eyes closed.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of St. Augustine - 'Beauty is the splendor of Truth.'

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Every How is carried by a What.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

It is much better to have just one idea, and if the idea is clear, then you can fight for it. That is how you can get things done.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

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 Rohe

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.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe