Top 957 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Architects - Page 3

Design is not about decorating functional forms - it is about creating forms that accord with the character of the object and that show new technologies to advantage.

We are the bullies of the earth: strong, foul, coarse, greedy, careless, indifferent to others, laying waste as we proceed, leaving wounds, welts, lesions, suppurations on the earth body, increasingly engulfed by our own ordure and, finally, abysmally ignorant of the way the world works, crowing our superiority over all life.

Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.

In a town church the right place for the admission of light.

A bold architectural statement turns a public building into a landmark, but it is in the details where the architect becomes the real storyteller.

Before I was 20, I was the leading architect of the Southwest.

The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth.

My exposure to visual art all my life was intensive.

There are no perfect answers. The earnest search is all we can expect.

You could say that my aim is ‘to recover the place’. The place is a result of nature and time; this is the most important aspect. I think my architecture is some kind of frame of nature. With it, we can experience nature more deeply and more intimately. Transparency is a characteristic of Japanese architecture; I try to use light and natural materials to get a new kind of transparency.

I like to be on the edge of the possible.

The key to being able to let go of all the stuff you're holding on to is knowing that you'll be okay if you don't have it. And that's the truth. You can survive with very little. And though the passing of people and things can be painful, you will survive.

I believe that self-discovery is an ongoing thing. I might not ever fully know who I am, but I also believe that I could be whoever I want, whenever I want.

Architecture cannot be understood without some knowledge of the society it serves.

A chair is not just a product of decorative art in a space, it is a form and a space in itself

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

We tend to rush toward the complex when trying to solve a daunting problem, but in this case, simplicity wins. Better buildings, responsible energy use and renewable energy choices are all we need to tackle both energy independence and climate change.

We are limited only by our lack of creativity. Our buildings should symbolize the exuberance of a free nation that encourages individual effort and creativity.

Should not the role of design be to reconnect human beings with their space on their land?

Buildings are always better than drawings and models.

Many of the received models of modern architecture and planning owe their ultimate origin to the building code and public health reform movements of the second half of the 19th century.

Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves.

Buildings should serve people, not the other way around.

To me, architecture is an art, naturally, and it isn't architecture unless it's alive. Alive is what art is. If it's not alive, it's dead, and it's not art.

Art is not special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself if it is good.

I learn more from creative people in other disciplines than I do even from other architects because I think they have a way of looking at the world that is really important.

It really will benefit every area of the business. Financial struggle is something I'm very familiar with as an independent designer.

If as individuals we can improve the geography only slightly, if at all, perhaps the more appropriately scaled subject for reshaping is ourselves.

One person can make a difference.

As an architect it is very important that you distinguish between different realities. There's the reality of the drawing and the reality of the building. So one could say, or at least it is the common belief that architecture has to be built; I always denied that, because ultimately it is based on an idea. I don't ever need a building to verify my idea. Of course, what with a building is more its vanity and actual physical experience. But I anticipate; I wouldn't even build it if I could not anticipate how it would be.

All space must be attached to a value, to a public dimension. There is no private space. The only private space that you can imagine is the human mind.

It is only logical that the pauperization of our soul and the soul of society coincide with the pauperization of the environment. One is the cause and the reflection of the other.

If you create the stage setting and it is grand, everyone who enters will play their part.

A design career is a process of learning better and better what you know instinctively.

I am as much interested in the smallest detail as in the whole structure.

Indifference to the fine arts comes close to barbarism.

No occupation is more worthy of an intelligent and enlightened mind, than the study of Nature and natural objects; and whether we labour to investigate the structure and function of the human system, whether we direct our attention to the classification and habits of the animal kingdom, or prosecute our researches in the more pleasing and varied field of vegetable life, we shall constantly find some new object to attract our attention, some fresh beauties to excite our imagination, and some previously undiscovered source of gratification and delight.

Good ideas come from everywhere. It's more important to recognize a good idea than to author it.

Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us, For we have no help but Thee.

The character of the architectural forms and spaces which all people habitually encounter are powerful agencies in determining the nature of their thoughts, their emotions and their actions, however unconscious of this they may be.

Build your architecture from what is beneath your feet.

The underlying attraction of the movement of water and sand is biological. If we look more deeply we can see it as the basis of an abstract idea linking ourselves with the limitless mechanics of the universe.

I strive to seek new material that fit into the logic of construction, while performing services appropriate to real needs.

Him & Her are born directly from the ideas behind the Panton Chair. An evolution of the hermaphroditic original, declined into the harmony of the two sexes. They assume sculpted forms like naked models of seduction...but they feel no shame.

I make a project and I panic. Which is good, it can be a method. First, panic. Second, conquer panic by working. Third, find ways to solve your doubts.

Life is the leaves which shape and nourish a plant, but art is the flower which embodies its meaning

Certainly architecture is concerned with much more than just its physical attributes. It is a many-layered thing. Beneath and beyond the strata of function and structure, materials and texture, lie the deepest and most compulsive layers of all.

No life is well-rounded without the subtle inspiration of beauty.

Art is only art if it is synonymous with living

One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places. The city is the locus of the collective memory.

If some hole does not possess striking individuality through some gift of nature, it must be given as much as possible artificially, and the artifice must be introduced in so subtle a manner as to make it seem natural.

Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea.

All gardening is landscape painting.

May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good.

What I want to do is try to raise the level of SCI-Arc's original mission, which was to be forward-thinking. And let's face it, if you're forward-thinking and you're dealing in concepts of new ideas, history has told us that new ideas are not always wanted by everyone.

Revived in this country the long forgotten beauties of Gothic architecture.

Beauty is a fact, and it can change with time. Something ugly in the morning can become beautiful in the evening.

The best designs of all are organic, evolving from the subtleties of the ground they inhabit.

The only limit to your garden is at the boundaries of your imagination.

I don't think we can ignore the Modern Movement. But I wouldn't have minded at all if it hadn't happened. I think the world would be a much nicer place.