We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows.
Interpretation
Understanding the future inhabitants' needs is crucial for effective architectural design.
This quote emphasizes the importance of an architect's connection with the people who will occupy the spaces they create. By deeply understanding the needs and desires of the residents, an architect can design functional and meaningful spaces that resonate with those who live in them. It suggests that the design process should be user-centered, with the inhabitants' experiences and lifestyle at the forefront of architectural considerations.
In practice
In a presentation on architecture, I quoted Mies Van Der Rohe to highlight the importance of understanding user needs.
We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All buildings, large or small, public or private, have a public face, a facade; they therefore, without exception, have a positive or negative effect on the quality of the public realm, enriching or impoverishing it in a lasting and radical manner. The architecture of the city and public space is a matter of common concern to the same degree as laws and language—they are the foundation of civility and civilisation.
Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots.
We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we - architects - can effect the quality of life of the people.
I'm a bad customer for my own buildings! If I'm choosing an apartment, I choose one about five or six stories high so that I can see the people, the trees, and the world on the street. Beyond that, I lose contact with the ground!
The space within becomes the reality of the building.
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