Top 184 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Gehry - Page 2

Childhood play is nothing more than an expression of our individuality and preparation for human interaction. Everybody’s an artist. Unfortunately we don’t treat them as such.

There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.

Not every person has the same kinds of talents, so you discover what yours are and work with them.

Let the experience begin!

Ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.

The architect Borromini's Quattro Fontane, a little church in Rome, is one of the most beautiful rooms in history.

I think the biggest problem with 'industrial' architecture is that it's lost its sense of humanity. Minimalist stuff drains all the humanity out of it. That idea works great for the money thing, but it doesn't work great for the feeling thing.

Childhood play is nothing more than an expression of our individuality and preparation for human interaction.

The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself.

I think you've got to accept that certain things are in process that you can't change, that you can't overwhelm. The chaos of our cities, the randomness of our lives, the unpredictability of where you're going to be in ten years from now - all of those things are weighing on us, and yet there is a certain glimmer of control. If you act a certain way, and talk a certain way, you're going to draw certain forces to you.

That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.

When I start my class I ask the students to write their signatures on pieces of paper and put them on a table. I have them look at them, and I point out, "They're all different, aren't they? That's you, that's you, that's you, that's you."

You have to build up a credibility before the support comes to you.

Art is about people. I think the discussion about whether architecture is art or not is lamebrain.

I found the material that people hated the most and used the most. So, I was going and try and see if I could play with it sculpturally.

Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in.

I like the idea of collaboration - it pushes you. It's a richer experience.

Everything - design and technology and materials - has changed since the World Trade Center was built. A lot of it has to do with computers, which allow us to be far more efficient as well as structurally sound.

Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.

We should celebrate variety rather than conformity and allow people to express themselves. That we don't is more of our denial.

I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination. I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building.

In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures.

I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.

If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.

I didn't have any interest in doing rich people's homes. I still don't.

We don't see the banality, but we accept banality. We accept it as inevitable, and it's not.

You have to be optimistic. I still have doubts and conflicts, but the bottom line is, I believe in the future.

Cardboard is another material that's ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made furniture with it everybody loved it.

I know I draw without taking my pen off the page. I just keep going, and that my drawings I think of them as scribbles. I don't think they mean anything to anybody except to me, and then at the end of the day, the end of the project, they wheel out these little drawings and they're damn close to what the finished building is and it's the drawing.

The whole can be greater than the sum of it's parts, that we all have something to put in the pie to make it better, and that the collaborative interaction works.

Time is just a blur for me. I don't know what - I don't even know where I am sometimes.

We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that. Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable. People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me."

There's a drive in us to express ourselves in some way or form. We pick up whatever material is available. It's primitive. Kids see sand on the beach, build something and show their parents: "Look what I did, Mama." It's necessary to us.

I found myself starting architecture with a deep social, Jewish, liberal conscience, and the belief that architecture is for the people. It was a do-gooder base; I was born and raised that way. I was for blacks, whites, Italians, Poles, whatever.

Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.

We have always created - music, literature, art, dance. The art around us - or lack of it - may be a measure of how we're doing as individuals and as a civilization, so maybe we should be worried.

We're physiologically wired differently.

Artists dismiss me as an architect, so I'm not in their box, and architects dismiss me as an artist, so I'm not in their box.

Everybody's an artist. Unfortunately we don't treat them as such.

Your work may be great and not make its way into the big picture... like Van Gogh... so who's to say what's good and bad?

I'm a do-gooder liberal.

You can look anywhere and find inspiration.

Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? I think I learned that from the artists, from my grandmother, from all the creative people I've spent time with over the years.

As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what's comfortable, and we're afraid of the different. We're afraid of change.

What I have learned about museum buildings is that buildings have to have iconic presentations. The position of the art museum vis-a-vis other civic buildings needs to be hierarchal in the community. It has to be equal to the library and the courthouse.

That's why you go into architecture - at least I did - to do things for people. I think most of us are idealists. You start out that way, anyway.

Take what comes your way. Do the best with it. Be responsible as you can and something good will happen.

You've got to like the people you work with.

That's where you have to look for your inspiration. Don't separate the rest of your life - who you are, what you love - from your work.

Those who say only artists and architects can create are the ones who are elitist.

I don't know whose box I'm in, and I don't really care.

The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself. I tell this to my students: It's not about copying me or my logic systems. It's about allowing yourself to be yourself.

If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility. It's not fluff. You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.

We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that.

I love working. I don't know what the word vacation means.

When people condemn me for designing iconic buildings in cities and not having an idea what a city is, they haven't done their homework. I started in urban design and city planning. It's just that when I got out of school there wasn't much of a market for that. There still isn't.

I'm inspired by a lot of stuff. I always was interested in sculpture and painting and music and literature and all those things. There's no one thing.

One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.

For me, every day is a new thing.

The idealism [in architecture] is in the formal arrangement, the relationship to the city, the use of materials that are available to me. That's where I say our powers are limited.