Architecture Quotes

"The way we do our architecture is to show that we can come up with our own solutions. We don't just take orders."

"The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture."

"Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music."

"Since the Beijing Olympics in 2008, our office has been discussing how we can make architecture more human and at one with nature. We need to ask ourselves, what legacy do we want to leave behind on humankind's urban culture?"

"The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line."

"For my first apartment, when I was first married, I went to the lumberyard and bought stuff and made couches. My then-wife made cushions. I was really very interested in furniture. I was in school for architecture, but I had to live, and making furniture was different from designing buildings, which I couldn't do for myself."

"I came to architecture from building. Because my father was a builder, everybody was - and is - a builder in my family."

"One of the dilemmas of architecture in general is that there is a Catch-22 - you can't actually get to be commissioned to do certain types of building until you've already built that type of building. So it seems to be incredibly hard to get going."

"Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?"

"It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone."

"A shan-shui city is a modern city, a high-density urban situation, but we pay more attention to the environment. We bring waterfalls; we bring in a lot of trees and gardens. We treat architecture as a landscape."

"Architecture is the story of how we see ourselves. It is the architect's job to service everyday life."

"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."

"Chaoyang Park Plaza is about how to carry the traditional culture into a new format in modern architecture. Instead of building a boundary between the city and the park, I tried to design this building to emerge from the natural landscape."

"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 wanted to be a cartoonist, but there was no cartoon academy. So I enrolled in the Royal Danish Art Academy School of Architecture. But then I really got smitten by architecture."

"There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff."

"It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled."

"Truly great architecture always transcends its stated function, sometimes in unanticipated ways."

"The loftier the building, the deeper must the foundation be laid."

"Considering my specialization in architecture, I'm not surprised that the first graphic novel to thoroughly engage, not to say captivate, me is Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor's 'Batman: Death by Design.'"

"The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical."

"One of the most persistent yet elusive dreams of the Modern Movement in architecture has been prefabrication: industrially made structures that can be assembled at a building site."

"I'm drawn to furniture design as complete architecture on a minor scale."

"I believe that architecture, as anything else in life, is evolutionary. Ideas evolve; they don't come from outer space and crash into the drawing board."

"I am an engineer, not just an architect, so I've always been motivated by technique or technology. As soon as technology moves just a little bit, it changes architecture."

"The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite."

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

"Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator."

"My house is my refuge, an emotional piece of architecture, not a cold piece of convenience."

"Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design."

"Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves."

"A house is a machine for living in."

"I'd like to do a lot of things - whether in design or architecture or business."

"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."

"The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish."

"There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture, took place for the first time."

"What is being called the UN 'gender architecture' is more like a shack. Women need a bigger global house if equality is ever to become a reality."

"I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age."

"When I started designing in school, I discovered that I had a knack for it. I fell completely in love with architecture, and I remain in love with it."

"I always look forward to the next project. That is one of the wonderful things about architecture - you always can hope for another project to design."

"Once I got out of architecture school I decided not to be an architect, I just started my own little design studio."

"Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence."

"It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time."

"Each new situation requires a new architecture."

"A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature."

"Architecture is inhabited sculpture."

"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."

"Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise."

"Architects in the past have tended to concentrate their attention on the building as a static object. I believe dynamics are more important: the dynamics of people, their interaction with spaces and environmental condition."