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Quotes by Architect

"After World War II great strides were made in modern Japanese architecture, not only in advanced technology, allowing earthquake resistant tall buildings, but expressing and infusing characteristics of traditional Japanese architecture in modern buildings."

"Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression."

"When I think of some of my earlier work, it really seems a fortunate coincidence that I succeeded."
Work,

"The Lincoln Memorial is related to the toga and the civilization that wore it."

"Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart."


"I have no requirements for a style of architecture."


"Then I sit down, work at it, because now I have a convincing feeling about what that place wants to be, you see? And it's not just me. Me and my talent comes in taking that consensus and then making something wonderful out of it - a work of art."


"Victorian architecture in the United States was copied straight from England."

"Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly."

"I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture."
Life,

"Part of our western outlook stems from the scientific attitude and its method of isolating the parts of a phenomenon in order to analyze them."

"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."

"Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom."

"Architecture is the art of how to waste space."

"Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems we split the possibilities to make good building art."

"Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it's about experience, it's about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious."


"Of all the lessons most relevant to architecture today, Japanese flexibility is the greatest."

"The innovative spirit was America's strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts."


"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous."

"In other words, each piece of the building must look as though it was designed for that particular building."

"I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains."

"And it is very moving because one has to see the site not as just another site of development but it is a very special site. It is a site that souls and hearts of all Americans."

"We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same."

"We felt it was very important for an entity like CCTV to make its presence felt... To generate a space and to define a space, that is the main thing."

"The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process."

"There will be a competition for the memorial. And then it can be developed with trees, with planting. It can become a very beautiful place protected from the streets, because it is below. And it can be something very moving and very private."

"We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form which we have not yet designed and a context which we cannot properly describe."


"A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe."

"Simply by not owning three medium-sized castles in Tuscany I have saved enough money in the last forty years on insurance premiums alone to buy a medium-sized castle in Tuscany."

"People always ask about my influences, and they cite a bunch of people I've never heard of."

"Youth is a quality, not a matter of circumstances."

"Life always rides in strength to victory, not through internationalism... but only through the direct responsibility of the individual."

"I don't get to sleep when I'm in New York. Really. I'm living on adrenaline."
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