Mies van der Rohe's architecture cried on nobody’s lapel; it made perfect, technologically appropriate cages, and limpid volumes of air, and that was all

 

His flair for the dramatic was aided by a gift for the sonorous phrase — of Mies van der Rohe, he wrote, “His architecture cried on nobody’s lapel; it made perfect, technologically appropriate cages, and limpid volumes of air, and that was all” — or the biting put-down: He once dismissed the buildings of Kevin Roche as “paramilitary dandyism.”

他擅長戲劇化的表達，這得益於他能言善辯——他曾這樣評價密斯·凡·德·羅：「他的建築不會讓人感到憤慨；它創造了完美的、技術上合適的牢籠，以及清澈的空氣空間，僅此而已”——或者尖刻的貶損：他曾形容凱文·羅奇的建築如同「準軍事化的紈綺子弟風」。”

His architecture cried on nobody’s lapel

The phrase is a literary device used to describe architecture that is unsentimental, stark, and purely functional. It suggests that the buildings did not seek emotional sympathy or tell a narrative of human suffering; they simply existed as efficient, "technologically appropriate cages".