Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Quotes

No design is possible until the materials with which you design are completely understood

Architecture is a language. When you are very good, you can be a poet

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

God is in the details.

We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself... New materials are not necessarily superior. Each material is only what we make it.

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

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

We must be as familiar with the functions of our building as with our materials. We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be.

It is better to be good than to be original.

Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms.

First you have to learn to do something, then you can go out and do it.

Architecture has the power to create order out of unholy confusion.

The long path from material through function to creative work has only one goal: to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time.

God dwells in the details.

Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit.

The individual is losing significance; his destiny is no longer what interests us.

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.

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.

But what if we are dealing with fools?

We must have order, allocating to each thing its proper place and giving to each thing is due according to its nature.

Never talk to a client about architecture. Talk to him about his children.

Architecture wrote the history of the epochs and gave them their names.

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

Each material is only what we make it.

Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value.

[In art], less is more.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It must be understood that every architecture is bound to its time and manifests itself only in vital tasks and through the materials of its age. It has never been otherwise.

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

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.

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.