Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's not so much about form versus functionality. Rather, it's about doing both and doing them a lot and doing them well-and that's how we should be talking about architecture.
Architects have created this fake separation between creation and execution. You can see it in architecture schools, where the students look down on going to contracts classes.
Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will. Such glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome.
And I like the idea of change. Because I don't see why we should hang a painting on the wall and then just not think of it anymore because it's there like a piece of furniture.
There will come a time when the proper education of children, by a glorified system of spontaneous education of choice, similar to the Montessori System, will be made possible.
I believe that the material doesn’t need to be strong to be used to build a strong structure. The strength of the structure has nothing to do with the strength of the material.
If I can create some space that people haven't experienced before and if it stays with them or gives them a dream for the future, that's the kind of structure I seek to create.
I think that capitalism has just gone too far. And it is actually not limited to the United States. The excesses of capitalism is making us suffer all over the world right now.
There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century.
My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn't impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place.
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.
When I went to Harvard and studied planning, I found I didn't have the skills or the strength to become the kind of public person who could go out and lobby government agencies.
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
A man with a machine may murder or enslave millions, whereas it used to take at least thousands to murder millions. And the man behind the machine has nothing on his conscience.
I think there will be a 200-story skyscraper someday. However, it will require a developer who will not think in conventional terms and for whom economic restraints won't apply.
Architecture is the very mirror of life.You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society.
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.
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. Living, Changing, New. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only such architecture is creative.
When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.
If [a woman] insisted on becoming an architect, I would try to dissuade her. If then, she was still determined, I would give her my blessing – she could be that exceptional one.
Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place.
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.
The dialogue between client and architect is about as intimate as any conversation you can have, because when you're talking about building a house, you're talking about dreams.
Solemn Australians think that an interest in design is a superficial and trivial interest. This is actually an improvement, they used to think it effeminate and vaguely immoral.
The strong desire to include every vital component of life instead of excluding part of them for the sake of too narrow and dogmatic an approach has characterized my whole life.
One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places. The city is the locus of the collective memory.
Any relationship between a building and its users is one of violence, for any use means the intrusion of a human body into a given space, the intrusion of one order into another.
Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.
Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. 'The client made me do this.' 'The city made me do this.' 'Oh, the budget.' I don't believe that anymore.
The government only makes restrictive rules, they dont show you what to do so you know, OK, heres where we need this many apartments, with open space, playgrounds, kindergartens.
We prefer synthetic rather than natural materials. Natural products are almost too valuable. Wood is much harder to produce than metal. And metal is recyclable, while wood isn't.
I'm working on a school of architecture in China. It's rare that an architect gets to design a school of architecture, and here I get to do it. I'm so pleased that they asked me.
Whatever is goode in its kinde ought to be preserv'd in respect for antiquity, as well as our present advantage, for destruction can be profitable to none but such as live by it.
[My vision is] To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.
There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping with all the beautiful plumbing in the beautiful office buildings -and all the people sleeping in the slums.
American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate.
Initiative can neither be created nor delegated. It can only spring from the self-determining individual, who decides that the wisdom of others is not always better than his own.
I hope America can also be the cultural leader of the world, and use this frontier spirit to lead and show others that we need courage to go places where we have not gone before.
I believe that architecture is fundamentally a public space where people can gather and communicate, think about the history, think about the lives of human beings, or the world.
That's what I love about Chicago... It is the staccato aspect of the skyscrapers. But the ground is very loose, very relaxed. It makes Chicago far more pleasant than other cities.
Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find that earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then to claim it: that is all!
I always wanted to do something creative, but as much as I'm creative, it's in a really hard-core, right-brained way. For me, painting doesn't do it for me. There's no constraint.
As long as artists arbitrarily assume the right to decide what is or is not art, it is logical that the public will just as arbitrarily feel that they have the right to reject it.
We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself... New materials are not necessarily superior. Each material is only what we make it.
Except for the projects in Israel, my being Israeli has contributed negatively to my global activity. It is hard for me, for example, to get projects in the Persian Gulf emirates.
It is only logical that the pauperization of our soul and the soul of society coincide with the pauperization of the environment. One is the cause and the reflection of the other.
All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly - right now.
The self-commissioned architect is the obviously exclusive potential - for as at present used, or designed, the world's resources are serving only forty-four per cent of humanity.
You don't have to become a slave in a corporate office or groupie of a celebrity architect, because all you need is a piece of paper, a pencil and the desire to make architecture.
Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.