We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Architecture is grounded in reality but transcends it through meaning and significance.
This quote emphasizes that while architecture must adhere to factual elements such as materials and structural integrity, its true essence is found in the meanings and emotional impacts it evokes. Mies van der Rohe suggests that the significance of architecture goes beyond its physical form, as it has the power to influence space, culture, and human experience.
Themes
ArchitectureSignificanceFactsMeaningDesign
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a lecture on the importance of meaning in architectural design.
More from Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
All quotes βThe 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.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
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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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 RoheRead
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 RoheRead
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 RoheRead
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