Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Architecture Quotations

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

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.

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.

The problem of architecture has always been the same throughout time. Its authentic quality is reached through its proportions, and the proportions cost nothing. In fact, most of them are proportions among things, not the things themselves. Art is almost always a question of proportions.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit.

But what if we are dealing with fools?

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.

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