27 Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes on Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright quotes on architecture

3. It is where life is fundamental and free that men develop the vision needed to reveal the human soul in the blossoms it puts forth. ... In a great workshop like Chicago this creative power germinates, even though the brutality and selfish preoccupation of the place drive it elsewhere for bread. Men of this type have loved Chicago, have worked for her, and believed in her. The hardest thing they have to bear is her shame. These men could live and work here when to live and work in New York would stifle their genius and fill their purse.... New York still believes that art should be imported; brought over in ships; and is a quite contented market place. So while New York has reproduced much and produced nothing, Chicago's achievements in architecture have gained world-wide recognition as a distinctively American architecture.

5. So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal.

9. Clear out 800,000 people and preserve it as a museum piece.

12. 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.

13. Here I am, Philip, am I indoors or am I out? Do I take my hat off or keep it on?

21. All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.

25. A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.

32. Architecture is the triumph of Human Imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word 'order.'

34. Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun.

36. Classicism is a mask and does not reflect transition. How can such a static expression allow interpretation of human life as we know it? A fire house should not resemble a French Chateau, a bank a Greek temple and a university a Gothic Cathedral. All of the '-isms' are imposition on life itself, by way of previous education.

40. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world. (1939)

41. Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

42. 'Form follows function' - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

47. He exposes all the function on the top and puts the form below. It's as if you were to wear your entrails on top of your head.

53. I think Ms. Monroe's architecture is extremely good architecture.

54. I would like to have a free architecture. Architecture that belonged where you see it standing - and is a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace.

62. Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture.

66. No stream rises higher than its source. Whatever man might build, could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built.

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

68. Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.

72. Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity.

73. The architect must be a prophet: a prophet in the true sense of the term. If he can't see at least ten years ahead, don't call him an 'architect.'

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

79. The space within becomes the reality of the building.

87. Well, now that he's finished one building, he'll go write four books about it.

91. He's the greatest architect of the nineteenth century.

92. His place in history is secure. His continuing influence is assured. This country's architectural achievements would be unthinkable without him. He has been a teacher to us all.