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Architecture Quotes
"You might say that when you step inside, you're entering a honorific space, but that's something totally different than experiencing it. And in architecture the experience comes first. That has the deepest effect on us."
32
"There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons."
32
"You can just drift unhappily towards this vision of heaven on earth, and ultimately that is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at it's best."
32
"I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That's impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more."
32
"Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity."
31
"What has happened to architecture since the second world war that the only passers-by who can contemplate it without pain are those equipped with a white stick and a dog?"
30
"Architecture is involved with the world, but at the same time it has a certain autonomy. This autonomy cannot be explained in terms of traditional logic because the most interesting parts of the work are non-verbal. They operate within the terms of the work, like any art."
29
"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."
29
"Trying to describe something musical is like dancing to architecture, it's really difficult."
29
"The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house."
28
"A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress."
26
"You can't build a great building on a weak foundation. You must have a solid foundation if you're going to have a strong superstructure."
22
"Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building."
21
"The reality of the building does not consist in the roof and walls but in the space within to be lived in."
21
"In architecture the pride of man his triumph over gravitation his will to power assume a visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms."
21
"Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture."
20
"Washington, D.C., has everything that Rome, Paris and London have in the way of great architecture - great power bases. Washington has obelisks and pyramids and underground tunnels and great art and a whole shadow world that we really don't see."
20
"Either a building is part of a place or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger."
20
"The job of buildings is to improve human relations: architecture must ease them, not make them worse."
20
"On inspection, Gaudi's architecture isn't whimsical at all."
19
"The White House was designed by Hoban a noted Irish-American architect and I have no doubt that he believed by incorporating several features of the Dublin style he would make it more homelike for any President of Irish descent. It was a long wait but I appreciate his efforts."
19
"Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself."
18
"All but universally, human architecture values front elevations over back entrances, public spaces over private. Danny Jessup says that this aspect of architecture is also a reflection of human nature, that most people care more about their appearance than they do about their souls."
18
"We shape our buildings thereafter they shape us."
17
"By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities."
17
"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us."
17
"We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward."
16
"If you put enough closets together, you have enough space for a room. If you put enough rooms together, you have enough room for a house. If you put enough houses together, you have space for a town, then a city, then a nation, then a world."
16
"It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect."
15
"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."
15
"I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead."
14
"All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks."
13
"Nothing - really, absolutely nothing - says more about Victorian Britain and its capacity for brilliance than that the century's most daring and iconic building was entrusted to a gardener."
12
"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."
12
"Modern architecture predominately specializes in designing what are essentially dimly lit caves."
12
"Rather than wait to see what the day or future holds, why not design and plan the future you want to experience?"
11
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