Architecture Quotes

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

"A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress."

"Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design."

"I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination."

"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."

"I don't believe in morality in architecture."

"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."

"Escape from the architecture ghetto is one of the major drivers and has been from the very beginning."

"What if we treat the high-rise like a mountain, or we have gardens in the sky, or waterfalls? I think that's the most challenging thing I want to try in my architecture."

"The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol."

"We were kind of arrogant when we started and became really humbled as we were doing architecture. It's really hard to work with budgets and deadlines and all of these collaborators and all of these voices and special interests."

"Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me."

"Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building."

"Architecture is a special kind of career that showcases the accumulations of culture, time, and history."

"It must be understood that every architecture is bound to its time and manifests itself only in vital tasks and through the materials of its age. It has never been otherwise."

"I've always been interested in an architecture of resistance - architecture that has some power over the way we live. Working under adversarial conditions could be seen as a plus because you're offering alternatives. Still, there are situations that make you ask the questions: 'Do I want to be a part of this?'"

"The oldest book I have is a treatise on architecture from the 17th century."

"My interest was always to do interdisciplinary work with space. I thought of architecture as one strand in a multimedia practice."

"I work a little bit like a sculptor. 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."

"Chicago's one of the rare places where architecture is more visible."

"You can never draw enough or read enough - reading about architecture, in other words."

"The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization."

"They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar."

"I call architecture frozen music."

"I believe that artistic activities change people. You do effect change. I see architecture as a political, social and cultural act - that is its primary role."

"I became a fanatic of the architecture of Le Corbusier and I visited almost all his buildings and read all his books. Only later on did I discover that all the things that impressed me in his books, particular his ideology, he had picked up from Auguste Perret."

"Oscar Niemeyer really inspired me. He's from South America, where nature has meaning. And his architecture was not expensive or high tech but artistic and spiritual. I like that."

"We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward."

"Today's developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise."

"Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins."

"The aesthetic of architecture has to be rooted in a broader idea about human activities like walking, relaxing and communicating. Architecture thinks about how these activities can be given added value."

"To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works."

"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."

"The problem of architecture has always been the same throughout time. Its authentic quality is reached through its proportions, and the proportions cost nothing. In fact, most of them are proportions among things, not the things themselves. Art is almost always a question of proportions."

"Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity."

"Architecture has its place in the concrete world. This is where it exists. This is where it makes its statement."

"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 intellectual force of the West is still dominant, but other cultures are getting stronger. I expect that we will develop a new way of thinking in architecture and urban planning, and that less will be based on our models."

"I think all good architecture should challenge you, make you start asking questions. You don't have to understand it. You may not like it. That's OK."

"In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function."

"Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house."

"Before the professionalization of architecture in the nineteenth century, it was standard for an aspiring mason or carpenter to begin his apprenticeship at fourteen and to become a master builder by his early twenties."

"I think it is widely agreed that Carl Steinitz, over the 50 years he taught at Harvard, has been one of the most important figures in influencing the theory and practice of landscape architecture and the application of computer technology to planning."

"Theatre is real-time - you get that real-time audience reaction, which is fantastic. And with art pieces, people don't ever have to explain themselves. You can do something and really follow a research. With architecture, you have to be much more public. You have to build consensus. You have to work within the law. There are more complexities."

"When I graduated from high school, I thought I wanted to make science fiction movies, so I applied to film school, but I couldn't get in. A professor told me I should try architecture instead."

"Landscape architecture is basically geodesign; it's designing geography. And yet geodesign is not only done by landscape architects, it's done by some of the world's largest corporations."

"I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character."

"The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness."

"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."

"The shan-shui city idea is trying to bring traditional values and ways of living to modern high-rise architecture."