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Quotes by Architect
"Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic."
52
"If you live in a squalid environment, then of course you are going to want to get out of it, you are probably going to want to get into the country, because that's what it does."
52
"It does not do to use it with forms whose origin is intimately bound up with a specific material simply because no technical difficulties stand in the way."
52
"I feel coming on a strange disease - humility."
51
"The computer offers another kind of creativity. You cannot ignore the creativity that computer technology can bring. But you need to be able to move between those two different worlds."
51
"It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces."
51
"Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?"
51
"I am moreover inclined to be concise when I reflect on the constant occupation of the citizens in public and private affairs, so that in their few leisure moments they may read and understand as much as possible."
51
"The thing is that I have a really intense, almost compulsive need to record. But it doesn't end there, because what I record is somehow transformed into a creative thing. There is a continuity. Recording is the beginning of a conceptual production. I am somehow collapsing the two - recording and producing - into a single event."
50
"I've never looked at a suburban building as being a minor building and an urban building as being a major building."
50
"In the Scottish Orkneys, the little stone houses with their single large room and central hearth had an extraordinary range of built-in furniture."
50
"Human requirements are the inspiration for art."
50
"Pictures can and do make a difference. Strong images of historical events do have an impact on society. They can help with change."
49
"What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority."
49
"The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative."
49
"Wherefore the mere practical architect is not able to assign sufficient reasons for the forms he adopts; and the theoretic architect also fails, grasping the shadow instead of the substance."
49
"Temporarily in 1934 I became a department head in the German Labor Front and dealt with the improvement of labor conditions in German factories. Then I was in charge of public works on the staff of Hess. I gave up both these activities in 1941."
49
"Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times."
49
"I believe very strongly, and have fought since many years ago - at least over 30 years ago - to get architecture not just within schools, but architecture talked about under history, geography, science, technology, art."
49
"The largest and most influential houses chiefly demonstrate the aloofness of the French approach."
49
"When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated."
48
"Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes."
48
"And you finally get to a consensus, where you get a sense of what really ought to be done, and then they give it to me and then I draw it. I mean draw it in the sense, the philosophical sense."
48
"I don't look so closely at women's fashion, but from the 20th century on, people have had the freedom to express themselves and their individualities, and fashion is one of the most fundamental ways in which they do this, men and women are equally able to express themselves."
48
"One of our theories is that one can offset this excessive compulsion toward the spectacular with a return to simplicity."
48
"It's a fantastic responsibility and a wonderful moment."
47
"In addressing a task, one almost always has several possible options, sometimes only a few, and they may all be practical and functional. But they lack the aesthetic aspect that raises it to architecture."
47
"I grow dizzy when I recall that the number of manufactured tanks seems to have been more important to me than the vanished victims of racism."
47
"My house is my refuge, an emotional piece of architecture, not a cold piece of convenience."
47
"Music assists him in the use of harmonic and mathematical proportion."
47
"Like flats of today, terraces of houses gained a certain anonymity from identical facades following identical floor plans and heights."
47
"An easy approach to the walls must be provided against: indeed they should be surrounded by uneven ground, and the roads leading to the gates should be winding and turn to the left from the gates."
47
"Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands."
47
"If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness."
47
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