Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Architect
1886-03-27
Quotes by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
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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.
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The building art is man's spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.
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Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the profound words of St. Augustine - 'Beauty is the splendor of Truth.'
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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.
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If one limits to developing only the kitchen and bathroom as standardized rooms because of their installation, and then also decides to arrange the remaining living area with movable walls, I believe that any justified living requirements can be met.
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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.
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Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.
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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.
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I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that.
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You can use up all the slums for new development. In all the cities of the world, there are large areas of these. Also, you can avoid the spread of these silly suburban houses. Chicago has thousands of them all over the place.
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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.
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Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into architecture.
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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.
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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.
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Technology is far more than a method, it is a world in itself. As a method, it is superior in almost every respect. But only where it is left to itself, as in gigantic structures of engineering, there technology reveals its true nature.
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Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form.
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We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
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Our utilitarian structures will mature into architecture only when, through their fulfillment of function, they become carriers of the will of the age.
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The building art is, in reality, always the spatial execution of spiritual decisions. It is bound to its times and manifests itself only in addressing vital tasks with the means of its times. A knowledge of the times, its tasks, and its means is the necessary precondition of work in the building art.
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Where can we find greater structural clarity than in the wooden buildings of old? Where else can we find such unity of material, construction and form? here, the wisdom of whole generations is stored.
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