Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As more and more architecture is finally unmasked as the mere organization of flow - shopping centers, airports - it is evident that circulation is what makes or breaks public architecture.
It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history.
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.
The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself. I tell this to my students: It's not about copying me or my logic systems. It's about allowing yourself to be yourself.
You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.
Streamlined time details are especially important, because by having to take a close look, we discover new things. Because of this, details will remain part of the building in the mind's eye
After about the first Millennium, Italy was the cradle of Romanesque architecture, which spread throughout Europe, much of it extending the structural daring with minimal visual elaboration.
Most architects say: I want to use this type of glass, even if it's too reflective or doesn't let enough light in. However, the use of a certain type of glass might change the comfort level.
Because, if we understand how a building is to be produced and we find a way that it can be more simply produced, then obviously we are contributing to building better buildings more easily.
Joseph Bazalgette created a sewer system which he originally sized for London's needs of the time - he then doubled it to anticipate the future beyond. These are the qualities that I admire.
I think the collectors have made an enormous contribution, not only to the market but to painters themselves... These people that buy, that set standards, make everyone else itch to emulate.
It is quite interesting that whilst there are tremendous theories, in the 1960s when IT was born, everybody was supposedly going to their cottage in the countryside to work in a virtual way.
Family is everything, although I've been fortunate enough to have worked with some of the most amazing minds over the years, including Renzo Piano, John Young, Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour.
I paint and work as a sculptor, and I see architecture as an art… If you follow this approach you can use techniques to the service of man and to the service of an artistic idea, and beauty.
I didn't know what architecture was except that I lived in a house. I don't even think that I knew the word for a long time. My dad funneled me into engineering because it was his background.
My beginnings in the Southwest are clear and palpable. My beginnings here made me pay attention to where the sun is, where the winds are, the power of the site... I take that baggage with me.
You could never hide yourself in these places - in Mies's Farnsworth house, for example. That was a mistake of Modernism. People need places to hide from each other, too. You need everything.
We should have a system of economics that is structure that is organic tools. We do not have it. We are all hanging by our eyebrows from skyhooks economically, just as we are architecturally.
If you want to push design into new areas, you have to work closely across the boundaries of people's trades and professions. If you know the questions to ask, you can pull out the expertise.
So what we have tried to do in our later buildings is to try to be completely consistent, as a painter is consistent or as a sculptor is consistent. Architecture also must be very consistent.
The greatest satisfaction, I think, is when a building opens and the public possesses it and you cut the umbilical cord and you see it taking on its own life. There’s no greater satisfaction.
I don't think I have a signature style that announces, 'This is a Safdie.' But I think star architects have seized an opportunity to go anywhere in the world to produce meaningless buildings.
I work anywhere between three and 10 years on a project, depending on the size. My lifetime is finite. Therefore, I have to look carefully at how many projects I want to put into my lifetime.
In this branch of utopian real estate, architecture is no longer the art of designing buildings so much as the brutal skyward extrusion of whatever site the developer has managed to assemble.
What we need is a critique of visual culture that is alert to the power of images for good and evil and that is capable of discriminating the variety and historical specificity of their uses.
Everyone has a desire, if not a need, to use their individual signatures. Whenever people meet to talk about a project, even stuffy old businessmen, they say they want to create something new.
The outside of any building may now come inside and the inside go outside, each seems as part of the other. Continuity, plasticity, and all the new simplicity the imply have at last come home.
I think our failure in the production of good town churches of distinctive character must have struck you often, as it has me, when contrasted with our comparative success in country churches.
How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.
The office building is a building for work, organization, lucidity and economy. Light, spacious working rooms, clearly arranged, undivided, only organized according to the pattern of the firm.
And I feel that we in our society should not be held by any such myth; that we should do everything we can to gain a delight and joy in our society with all the available parts of the palette.
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.
If you have total freedom, then you are in trouble. It's much better when you have some obligation, some discipline, some rules. When you have no rules, then you start to build your own rules.
When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city ... but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty.
I'm just saying that there are high quality materials, and when we change them then there should be a way of changing them so that you can celebrate that change - rather than just 'mix it up'.
One of the things you see in New York is that offices keep their lights on at night. They're proud of their building. Great. But they must find another way to be proud without draining energy.
Comedy as a genre is the one that has given me maximum success, and I do broadly get associated with this genre. I thoroughly enjoy comedy, especially because it is inherent to my personality.
When you have rules to abide by, does that curtail you as a designer, or set you free? People think of classical architecture visually, but I think the brilliant part of it is actually spatial.
You will soon find that I am a bit obsessive about my work. And that is a little sad, one often feels strangely restricted, not finding time to simmer, although one actually has many interests.
Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.
In my opinion, further consideration of those views will help us find a way out of the current impasse, and reveal to us the kinds of buildings and cities required by the informational society.
Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.
You must understand the difference between being an architect and a politician. Architecture is a profession of perseverance. You have to come through. The politician is there to blame someone.
All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.
Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus he loves the house and hates art.
I am a strong believer that as one moves toward the future, the strongest and clearest way to do it is if you have a good sense of your past. You cannot have a very tall tree without deep roots.
There are geologists who can pick up a rock and say, 'Yes, there's oil under there.' A geologist who has been studying those kinds of rocks for 10 or 20 years is able to make that pronouncement.
Erich Mendelsohn's drawings are expressive and beautiful. If he'd had the computers we have now, everything I've done he would have done before me. I would have had to figure out something else.
Most of our designs are developed long before there is a practical possibility of carrying them out. I do that on purpose and have done it all my life. I do it when I am interested in something.
I would never wear anything with a logo. That I really find difficult. It's a frustration that I'll find a nice shirt or something and it's got 50 prints of the logo on it - why do they do this?