Top 957 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Architects - Page 16

I try firstly to make buildings humane.

My father liked doing carpentry work, construction work, in the summer vacation. And so my mother designed a cabin, a log cabin, like a - it was like a Swiss chalet. I was twelve years old, and my father and I built it on a rocky point peninsula out into Lake Superior.

Even in modern art, artists have used methods based on calculation, inasmuch as these elements, alongside those of a more personal and emotional nature, give balance and harmony to any work of art.

The plastic bottle we're throwing away every day still stays there. And if we show that to people, then we can also promote some behavioral change.

I write best in the morning, and I can only write for about half a day, that's about it.

I try to understand place on a deeper level than just the physical or environmental aspects. It includes cultural and intellectual forces, too. It's an inclusive approach that brings in many disciplines and sees place as a dynamic thing.

If we had this back, and in full measure; if society were infused by it, through and through, and men lived its life, and in its life, philosophy would take care of itself and the nature of our institutions would not matter.

It was a requirement by the veterans to list the 57,000 names. We're reaching a time that we'll acknowledge the individual in a war on a national level.

Architecture is about public space held by buildings.

Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.

The number of African Americans in my profession is woefully small; about two percent of architects in the country are black. I'd like to see more diversity. That's why whenever I'm asked to speak at middle and high schools I always say yes.

First, there is the bare beauty of the logs themselves with their long lines and firm curves. Then there is the open charm felt of the structural features which are not hidden under plaster and ornament, but are clearly revealed, a charm felt in Japanese architecture.

In nature, there is no separation between design, engineering, and fabrication; the bone does it all.

Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.

When I designed my loft, I literally framed the World Trade Center as a picture postcard I could see from my bed. I no longer have that image, and I mourn it.

I will never be able to go back to Sweden without knowing inside myself that I'd done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible

The organization of information actually creates new information.

Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

In a traditional Japanese or Chinese garden, it's not only about the building or temple but about the whole setup - the structure, the landscape, the light, the plants, the water. The whole experience that makes your life there so beautiful.

I always say to young people when they ask me how I work, I always say to them, the only time you've ever going to do something good is if you have a good client. And by good I mean all kinds of things.

Today, for the first time - and the Obama campaign showed us this - we can go from the digital world, from the self-organizing power of networks, to the physical one.

Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.

I viewed the station as a place, a terrain where I could put a new architecture in place. The station was, of course, an historic monument, but it does not deserve all the respect given it when it is said it is perfect, original and coherent expression of a past that we must revere. Orsay is basically a box.

An important work of architecture will create polemics.

Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart.

I am a reasonable and sane functionalist tempered by irrational frivolity.

When a project has an ample budget, I am interested now in using bigger units of materials.

Architects feel empowered to give opinions about politics and sociology and philosophy without knowing much about it. Kind of in the same way that they think they can design furniture or fashion or utensils for dining.

We have to base architecture on the environment.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

It is important to realize that whatever we do or design has iconographic references, it comes from somewhere; any form is always metaphorical, never totally metaphysical; it is never a 'destiny' but always a fact with some kind of historical reference. To put an object on a base means to monumentalize it, to make everyone aware it exists.

Horizontal and vertical sprawl... are the dinosaurs of an ending fossil-fuel age of synthetic culture.

Architecture is a art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being.

The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity.

Pretending to care what men think is an art. It takes moments to learn, but lifetimes to master. I'd like to believe I'm an expert.

I have made a sculpture … you will never be finished with it – when you pass around it or see it against the sky… something new goes on all the time… together with the sun, the light and the clouds, it makes a living thing.

That's not a utopian vision. It is a set of ideas that we think are important to discuss. Those ideas largely have to do with sustainability of cities. The ability of cities to, over time, remain in balance with the resource streams that are available to them, and they have to do with social justice and equity of the fundamental conditions of satisfactory citizenship.

For me, architecture is the means, not the end. It's a means of making different life forms possible.

Women are always told, 'You're not going to make it, its too difficult, you can't do that, don't enter this competition, you'll never win it,' - they need confidence in themselves and people around them to help them to get on.

Never turn down a job because you think it's too small; you don't know where it can lead.

I have designed the most buildings of any living American architect.

Architecture, like dance, is also a language - one that everybody understands.

You have to be able to wake up in the morning and say, 'I've been true.

Structure is not just a means to a solution. It is also a principle and a passion.

All our moments are last moments. We abide in the forever leaving of our own coming? We can put our hands together, palm to palm, settling here on the last leaf of our brief flight, and bow to the wonder of it.

EMBRACING THE EXISTING Japanese perspective on urban history and context

I do very little industrial design. I'm asked a lot, but I certainly don't see myself as an industrial designer.

When I began designing machines I also began to think that these objects, which sit next to each other and around people, can influence not only physical conditions but also emotions. They can touch the nerves, the blood, the muscles, the eyes and the moods of people.

There is a need in every generation to study the past, to absorb its spirit, to preserve its messages...it's a collaboration of ourselves and our ancestors, the result is a deeper understanding for individuals and in consequence, a broader culture for the nation.

We're all nurtured by mother nature's cycles and seasons.

Space is the breath of art.

Because over and over again, the times that I've done really good things is because I've had a wonderful client of some kind, and a lot of it depended on me to induce them to be creative.

No rendering can really simulate the way the light bounces off the bronze panel. From some angles, it's almost a mirror, and from others it's a matte surface.

I collect art like other people eat pizza. I can't get enough of it. I need a constant source of inspiration.

To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom.

The essence of the enjoyment of a garden is that things should look as though they like to grow in it.