Selected architecture quotes

1. The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

2. 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.

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

4. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

10. 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.

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

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

13. Everyone should be able to build, and as long as this freedom to build does not exist, the present-day planned architecture cannot be considered art at all.

14. Today we live in a chaos of straight lines, in a jungle of straight lines. If you do not believe this, take the trouble to count the straight lines which surround you. Then you will understand, for you will never finish counting.

15. I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.

16. Why do people build houses to keep the climate out, then cut holes in the walls to let it in again? I shall never understand.

17. Are you perchance running on a 64-bit machine?

18. The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.

19. Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm.

20. The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement.

21. I have always accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin.

22. My work is not about 'form follows function,' but 'form follows beauty' or, even better, 'form follows feminine.'

23. I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise.

24. My ambition has always been to reduce a building's support to a minimum. The more we diminish supporting structures, the more audacious and important the architecture is. That has been my life's work.

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

26. Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.

27. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone.

28. One thing is sure: the Sagrada Familia is the first Catholic temple whose bacon was ever saved by Shinto tourism. Not even Gaudi, who believed in miracles, could have forseen that.

29. The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect.

30. Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system.

31. You must build your House of Parliament on the river: so... that the populace cannot exact their demands by sitting down round you.

32. Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.

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

34. 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.'

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

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

37. 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.'

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

39. It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down. It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses. It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.

40. I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete.: This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women.

41. [Prague is the] prettiest gem in the stone crown of the world...

42. Ghastly Good Taste, or a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture.

43. There was no death row at Cold Mountain, only E Block, set apart from the other four and about a quarter their size, brick instead of wood, with a horrible bare metal roof that glared in the summer sun like a delirious eyeball.

44. I went to the Rayburn Building the other day on trifling business. It was an appalling experience. I had forgotten how preposterous the thing is with its pretentious megatonnage of rock and steel spreading acre after acre down the slope of Capitol Hill in sullen defiance to eternity and man. It dwarfs the forum of the Caesars. Mussolini would have wept in envy. Inside, one is compelled to dwell upon the insignificance of humanity. Not a single tiny wisp of beauty, nothing that is graceful, or charming, or eccentric, or human presents itself to the senses. Trying to imagine Clay and Webster in this celebration to the death of the spirit, erected to the glory that was Congress, is an exercise in comic despair. What do we have? Banks of stainless-steel elevators. Miracles of plumbing. Corridors of cemetery marble stretching to far horizons under the most artificial light millions of dollars can create, a light that abides no shadow, grants no privacy, tolerates nothing that is interesting in the slightest degree. Occasionally a small figure appeared in the distance, grew larger, then larger, then assumed human proportion, then passed and became smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Two ants had passed in a pyramid.