Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most architects work in studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and historical research were irrelevant.
We should celebrate variety rather than conformity and allow people to express themselves. That we don't is more of our denial.
I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope.
Man is a phase of nature, and only as he is related to nature does he matter, does he have any account whatever above the dust.
I haven't taken any new projects in the past years - I told myself, if I cannot live long enough to finish it, I don't want it.
I would like to hear Elliot Carter's Fourth String Quartet, if only to discover what a cranky prostate does to one's polyphony.
As a child, I was obsessed with drawing things, like Mickey and Donald. And houses. My mother was worried I'd become an artist.
Koishikawa Korakuen Garden - one of Tokyo's oldest Japanese gardens, and one of the best spots for viewing the cherry blossoms.
Right now I am a passenger on space vehicle Earth zooming about the Sun at 60,000 miles per hour somewhere in the solar system.
If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do... HOW WOULD I BE? WHAT WOULD I DO?
Working in Tokyo has convinced me that, contrary to what people think, it is actually one of the world's most beautiful cities.
I think there's an intricacy in doing something that's meant to look really simple and having it actually be quite complicated.
The task of the architectural project is to reveal, through the transformation of form, the essence of the surrounding context.
For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
The great dream merchant Disney was a success because make-believe was what everyone seemed to need in a spiritually empty land.
The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.
The two most important tools an architect has are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledge hammer on the construction site.
I have only one dream. It is the oldest of humanity, of man, in time. It is paradise. I would like to give paradise to everyone.
A building is a human being's space and the background for his dignity and its exterior should reflect its contents and function
There is no place in a city that can't be better. There is no toad that can't be a princess, no frog that can't become a prince.
After my time in Holland, an inner battle ensued in which I tried to free myself from the influence of Schinkelesque classicism.
I don't clean now, because I'm paralyzed. But let me tell you, I would clean. I cleaned, and I ironed. It's my inner femininity.
I want to be the first person to animate bags - everything done for handbags bores me to tears - I want to make it more playful.
In the theater, everything is ephemeral. Everything is almost weightless and without a very clear definition of how you made it.
A building has at least two lives - the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward - and they are never the same.
You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.
I think of the past and the future as well as the present to determine where I am, and I move on while thinking of these things.
Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in.
You see a lot of so-called architecture that part of the ego trip overpowers the functionality and the budget and all that stuff.
Why should architecture or objects of art in the machine age, just because they are made by machines, have to resemble machinery?
The future is female, so women are invited, as they do, to take responsability in the world of politics, in the economics, in art
In architecture, the demand was no longer for box-like forms, but for buildings that have something to say to the human emotions.
I really don't know the Chicago School. You see, I never walk. I always take taxis back and forth to work. I rarely see the city.
There is no reason to design buildings that are more basic and rectilinear, because with concrete you can cover almost any space.
Light belongs to the heart and spirit. Light attracts people, it shows the way, and when we see it in the distance, we follow it.
We look at each one [project] and consider the context - what it is and what it can be - beyond the strictly functional concerns.
Architecture is a result of a process of asking questions and testing them and re-interrogating and changing in a repetitive way.
But I think that parents who criticise their children too much are in fact better than parents who praise their children too much.
There may be some changes in building codes, but I don't see any stylistic departure that you'll be able to attribute to Sept. 11.
Most architects work in studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and historical research were irrelevant.
Good restaurant design is about achieving equilibrium between the food, service, and design - in effect, telling a complete story.
Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.
Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity
San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.
Transparency is not the same as looking straight through a building: it's not just a physical idea, it's also an intellectual one.
Friendship's said to be a plant of tedious growth, its root composed of tender fibers, nice in their taste, cautious in spreading.
As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking - personal creativity is required only rarely.
Architecture appears for the first time when the sunlight hits a wall. The sunlight did not know what it was before it hit a wall.
It is much better to have just one idea, and if the idea is clear, then you can fight for it. That is how you can get things done.
I think cars encapsulate the history of innovation and style - it's the other side of the coin of the car being public enemy No.1.