Architecture and the Will of an Epoch - Rethinking Space and Place

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space and place.

This is my reformulation of Mies van der Rohe’s famous definition of Architecture: ‘Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.’ ^[1] Space, alone, is no more sufficient to describe the systemic complexity of architecture, which, at the beginning of a new era, is better understood through the complementary agency of space and place. In this regard, see also the final section of the article Beyond Architectural Realities: Place, Space, and the In-Between.

Note

[1] This issue was addressed by Mies van der Rohe in the article ‘Baukunst und Zeitwille’ (Building Art and the Will of the Epoch), originally published in the magazine Der Querschnitt, 4, 1,(1924), pp. 32-32, and reproduced, in English, in Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991), 245-247. The incipit of the specific phrase I have used here – ‘Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space’ – originates from a note released by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on September 17, 1947, during the retrospective exhibition of Mies van der Rohe’s architecture. Coinciding with the exhibition’s opening, a book edited by Philip Johnson was published, featuring Mies van der Rohe’s works and writings. The MoMA note states: ‘Architecture is the will of the epoch translated into space. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the new architecture will be uncertain and tentative. Until then it must remain a chaos of undirected forces. The question as to the nature of architecture is of decisive importance. It must be understood that all architecture is bound up with its own time, that it can only be manifested in living tasks and in the medium of its epoch. In no age has it been otherwise.’ Again, a few lines after we read: ‘Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space; living, changing, new.’ The same concept is also attested in the Storia dell’ Architettura Moderna, by Kenneth Frampton (Bologna: Zanichelli Editore, 1993), 185.