A Quote by Arthur Erickson

The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.

Arthur Erickson

Quote Topics

Architecture Design Art Between Bottom Bottom Line Caught Details Expression Line Source Very Vice

Quote Author

Arthur Erickson
Canadian - Architect
June 14, 1924 - May 20, 2009

Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.

Arthur Erickson

The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

Freeman Dyson

Architecture is art. I don't think you should say that too much, but it is art. I mean, architecture is many, many things. Architecture is science, is technology, is geography, is typography, is anthropology, is sociology, is art, is history. You know all this comes together. Architecture is a kind of bouillabaisse, an incredible bouillabaisse. And, by the way, architecture is also a very polluted art in the sense that it's polluted by life, and by the complexity of things.

Renzo Piano

The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

Michelangelo

The bones of my architecture are very much related to the structure, to the physical fact of how a building can stand up; it's also related to geometry and a certain understanding of the architecture in which there is a balance between expression and function.

Santiago Calatrava

We need an honest bottom line. Today that bottom line is vastly subsidized. If anyone of us were paying the full cost of oil our bottom lines would be very different. If you internalize the cost of oil, look at the cost of the war in the Middle East or the cost of global warming for future generations, if you internalize those external costs and what you pay, that bottom line would look very different, what ever business you are in.

Ray Anderson

For me, architecture is an art the same as painting is an art or sculpture is an art. Yet, architecture moves a step beyond painting and sculpture because it is more than using materials. Architecture responds to functional outputs and environmental factors. Yet, fundamentally, it is important for me to stress the art in architecture to bring harmony.

Santiago Calatrava

Does it follow that the house has nothing in common with art and is architecture not to be included in the arts? Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument. Everything else that fulfils a function is to be excluded from the domain of art.

Adolf Loos

I have tried to get close to the frontier between architecture and sculpture and to understand architecture as an art.

Santiago Calatrava

I think racism is a bottom-line AIDS issue. And I think homophobia is a bottom-line AIDS issue, and sexism and class issues and all of this. I think that we are not going to solve the AIDS epidemic unless we deal with these issues, and vice versa.

Ann Northrop

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'd been to Stourhead and was inspired by the perfect parity between architecture and art; in fact, the architecture is the art. I wrote a piece called 'Not Sculpture Park,' because most of these things become car parks for bought-in sculpture. The artists should be working with the site, not just plonking pieces down.

Charles Jencks

As far as I'm concerned, there is no line between high art and pop art, and there should be no line.

Wayne White

I think I understand the relationships between different people within the company: people who are straightforward employees, people who can impact the bottom line, and people who share in the bottom line. I don't think you can understand inequality in America unless you understand what's driving profitability.

Tom Steyer

It's - everybody's looking at the bottom line all the time, and failure doesn't look good on the bottom line, and yet you don't learn anything without failing.