ARCHITECTS QUOTES

Dela Torre, Karen B.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. The truth is more important than facts. A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working. An idea is salvation by imagination. The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union. The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty. The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.

PHILIP JOHNSON

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. Architecture is the art of how to waste space. Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we've both got to say yes to someone if we want to stay in business. All architects want to live beyond their deaths. The best thing to do with water is to use a lot of it. We do pretty much whatever we want to.

LUDWIG MIES VAN DE ROHE

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins. God is in the details. Less is more. True education is concerned not only with practical goals but also with values. Our aims assure us of our material life, our values make possible our spiritual life. I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good. "A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous." "It is better to be good than to be original." Let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work. Let us lead them into the healthy world of primitive building methods, where there was meaning in every stroke of an axe, expression in every bite of chisel.

LE CORBUSIER

A house is a machine for living in. A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe. Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep. The home should be the treasure chest of living. To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.

KENZO TANGE

Nevertheless, the basic forms, spaces, and appearances must be logical. Technological considerations are of great importance to architecture and cities in the informational society. There is a powerful need for symbolism, and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart. There is a powerful need for symbolism, and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart. Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself. I feel however, that we architects have a special duty and mission... (to contribute) to the socio-cultural development of architecture and urban planning.

TADAO ANDO

Japanese traditional architecture is created based on these conditions. This is the reason you have a very high degree of connection between the outside and inside in architecture. There is a role and function for beauty in our time. When I design buildings, I think of the overall composition, much as the parts of a body would fit together. On top of that, I think about how people will approach the building and experience that space. "Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism, I use architecture to reconcile the two. The speed of change makes you wonder what will become of architecture.

LOUIS KAHN

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow and the shadow belongs to Light A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable. Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became. The nature of space reflects what it wants to be. The sun never knew how great it was until it struck the side of a building. To express is to drive. And when you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature. And there is where Design comes in. And if you think of Brick, for instance, and you say to Brick, What do you want Brick? And Brick says to you I like an Arch. And if you say to Brick Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel over you. What do you think of that? Brick says:...I like an Arch. Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

WALTER GROPIUS

Architecture begins where engineering ends. If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality. Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning. Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society. Specialists are people who always repeat the same mistakes.

I.M. PEI

Great artists need great clients. "I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity."

FRANK GEHRY

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. You've got to bumble forward into the unknown.

Jewelry is an art form, ... In conceptualizing designs for Tiffany, I worked as I always do, sketching and creating models. Sculptors and painters have inspired me with their ability to make things with their own hands. This process led to the discovery of new ways to give feeling and spirit to form, and realize our shared vision of jewelry that provides a beautiful context for living now. [The design process is in limbo.] We have not had any contact at all, ... I can see that it's precarious.
I think that there is a desire on the part of the city and county to do something special there. It needs a mix of populations. It's got to be a mix of different age groups, economic groups and ethnic groups to really function. Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.

ZAHA HADID

Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space... On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure. In another way, I can be my own worst enemy. As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice, and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality. For a woman to go out alone into architecture is still very, very hard. It's still a man's world. It is insufficient for architecture today to directly implement an existing building typology; it instead requires architects to carefully examine the whole area with new interventions and programmatic typologies There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?

ANTONIO GAUDI

Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin. Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator. The creation continues incessantly through the media of man. Copiers do not collaborate. Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic.

REM KOOLHAAS

Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture. Each building has to be beautiful, but cheap and fast, but it lasts forever. That is already an incredible battery of seemingly contradictory demands. So yes, I'm definitely perhaps contradictory person, but I operate in very contradictory times. Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill. But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament. It's a weird city because the uglier the weather, the more beautiful the city. And the uglier the buildings, the more coherent the city. Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.

RENZO PIANO

A museum is a place where one should lose one's head.

EERO SAARINEN

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

SANTIAGO CALATRAVA

It's very atmospheric. It's not a building that is a severe statement in the skyline. We need the height; otherwise, the building almost disappears because it is so slender. I am very happy that people have understood our desire to develop this design beyond the ideas we first presented. Now we have taken everything a step further, in order to connect this building to the city around it. There was a wish to get something exceptional. I also wanted to deliver something technically unique. He taught readers that they deserve beauty and meaning and must demand it in their cities. He taught me, and many architects, that we must answer this demand and never stop challenging ourselves.