God is in the details.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.
I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.
Less is more.
A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.
It is not possible to go forward while looking back.
We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
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.
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
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.
What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between 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.
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.
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.
The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows.
The building art is man's spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.
Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into 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.
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.
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.
It is no use working with other architects. What can they do? Who does what?
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.
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.
Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.
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.
The idea of service leads to community.
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.
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.
Our utilitarian structures will mature into architecture only when, through their fulfillment of function, they become carriers of the will of the age.
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.
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 depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
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.
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.
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.
I thought a lot and I controlled my thoughts in my work - and I controlled my work through my thoughts.
Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of St. Augustine - 'Beauty is the splendor of Truth.'
Create form out of the nature of the task with the means of our time. This is our work.
Every How is carried by a What.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Behrens had a great sense of the great form. that was his main interest; and that I certainly understood and learned from him.
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.
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.
