quotes about Architecture
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One might regard architecture as history arrested in stone.
-- A. L. Rowse -
Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style.
-- Ada Louise HuxtableSource : Ada Louise Huxtable (1986). “The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style”, Pantheon
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Good architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms: efficiency and beauty.
-- Ada Louise HuxtableSource : Ada Louise Huxtable (2010). “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change”, p.43, Bloomsbury Publishing USA
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Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
-- Al CappSource : In National Observer 1 July 1963
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One cannot make architecture without studying the condition of life in the city
-- Aldo Rossi -
What surprises me most in architecture, as in other techniques, is that a project has one life in its built state but another in its written or drawn state.
-- Aldo Rossi -
Marble, I perceive, covers a multitude of sins.
-- Aldous Huxley -
I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music, architecture, novels, and plays. Anywhere that hits you.
-- Alex Winter -
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I am but an architectural composer.
-- Alexander Jackson Davis -
I have designed the most buildings of any living American architect.
-- Alexander Jackson Davis -
Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization.
-- Alvar Aalto -
We should concentrate our work not only to a separated housing problem but housing involved in our daily work and all the other functions of the city.
-- Alvar Aalto -
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True architecture exists only where man stands in the center.
-- Alvar AaltoSource : Alvar Aalto, Peter Reed, Kenneth Frampton, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1998). “Alvar Aalto: between humanism and materialism”, ABRAMS
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Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.
-- Alvar Aalto -
It is the task of the architect to give life a gentler structure.
-- Alvar AaltoSource : "Aalto in Finland" by R.W. Apple, Jr., www.nytimes.com. November 26, 1978.
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Tradition is a challenge to innovation..
-- Alvaro Siza Vieira -
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Music, architecture and pictures have always been my passions, and all that material wealth has meant for me, is being able to have some of the pictures I liked.
-- Andrew Lloyd Webber -
Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.
-- Anish Kapoor -
The secret of good architecture is having more than meets the eye.
-- Annabelle Selldorf -
The concept of architecture as analogous to landscape is something that has interested me for a long time.
-- Antoine Predock -
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Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic.
-- Antonio Gaudi -
Clearly, if a building is not functionally and technically in order, then it isn't architecture either, it's just a building.
-- Arne Jacobsen -
In addressing a task, one almost always has several possible options, sometimes only a few, and they may all be practical and functional. But they lack the aesthetic aspect that raises it to architecture.
-- Arne Jacobsen -
If a building becomes architecture, then it is art.
-- Arne Jacobsen -
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I don't see that any buildings should be excluded from the term architecture, as long as they are done properly.
-- Arne Jacobsen -
Architecture tends to consume everything else, it has become one's entire life.
-- Arne Jacobsen -
The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.
-- Arthur Erickson -
Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?
-- Arthur Erickson -
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Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.
-- Arthur EricksonSource : Speech to McGill University School of Architecture, www.arthurerickson.com. October 21, 2000.
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A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
-- Ayn Rand -
I love cloisters, which are the architectural equivalent of a theological concept: perfect freedom within set boundaries.
-- Barbara Grizzuti Harrison -
I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.
-- Barry Mann -
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If you're into architecture and you're from the West, everything is hors d'oeuvres for working to rebuild the Temple. Ultimately you're led there. You can't escape it.
-- Ben Nicholson -
The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.
-- Benjamin HaydonSource : Benjamin Robert Haydon, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon (1876). “Correspondence and Table-talk: With a Memoir”, p.423
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There is much to learn from architecture before it became an expert's art.
-- Bernard RudofskySource : Bernard Rudofsky, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1964). “Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-pedigreed Architecture”, p.6, UNM Press
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Concepts differentiate architecture from mere building...A bicycle shed with a concept is architecture; a cathedral without one is just a building.
-- Bernard Tschumi -
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I never talked about architecture with my father, which I regret
-- Bernard Tschumi -
My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn't impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place.
-- Bernard Tschumi -
The fact is that automobiles no longer have a place in the big cities of our time.
-- Bertrand Delanoe -
The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.
-- Bertrand Russell -
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I'm drawn to furniture design as complete architecture on a minor scale.
-- Brad Pitt -
The Internet has created an incredible democratization of the architecture industry.
-- Cameron Sinclair -
If the architecture is any good, a person who looks and listens will feel its good effects without noticing.
-- Carlo Scarpa -
I'd like to do a lot of things - whether in design or architecture or business.
-- Caroline Wozniacki -
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I would have liked maybe to be in architecture or painting, something connected to the fine arts.
-- Catherine Deneuve -
Architecture is too slow in its realisation to be a 'problem solver'.
-- Cedric PriceSource : Cedric Price (2003). “Re: CP”, p.136, Springer Science & Business Media
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Like medicine (architecture) must move from the curative to the preventive.
-- Cedric Price -
Architecture must concern itself continually with the socially beneficial distortion of the environment.
-- Cedric Price -
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I do believe architecture, and all art, should be content-driven. It should have something to say beyond the sensational.
-- Charles Jencks -
Don’t go where it is all fine music and grand talk and beautiful architecture; those things will neither fill anybody’s stomach, nor feed his soul. Go where the gospel is preached, the gospel that really feeds your soul, and go often.
-- Charles Spurgeon -
I would've been intrigued by being a film director. I would've been intrigued by politics. I thought about architecture.
-- Charlie Rose -
The only job that was ever of interest to me other than filmmaking is architecture.
-- Christopher Nolan -
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Architecture aims at Eternity
-- Christopher WrenSource : Sir Christopher Wren (1942). “The City Churches, Vestry Minutes and Churchwardens' Accounts: St Mary's, Ingestre, Staffordshire; All Saints' and Sessions House, Northampton; the Royal Hospital, Chelsea; the Church and Almshouses, Farley, Wiltshire; the Sheldonian Theatre and Tom Tower, Oxford; the Market House, Abingdon, Berkshire; the Bridge, St. John's College, Cambridge; the New School, Eton; Kensington Palace; the Royal Observatory, Greenwich; Morden and Bromley Colleges; and the Five Tracts on Architecture by Sir Chr. Wren. Drawings, Engravings and Photographs ...”
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He was of opinion that what we now vulgarly call the Gothick, ought properly and truly be named Saracenick Architecture refined by the Christians.
-- Christopher WrenSource : "Conclusion of the life of Sir Christopher Wren". The Magazine of Magazines, p. 11, January 1759.
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My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.
-- Clara Schumann -
Architecture is supposed to complete nature. Great architecture makes nature more beautiful-it gives it power.
-- Claudio Silvestrin -
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Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.
-- Coco Chanel -
I like the architecture of lingerie.
-- Colleen AtwoodSource : "Costume Legend Colleen Atwood and Composer Marco Beltrami Reflect On Their Careers". Interview with Zainab Akande, www.indiewire.com. November 7, 2014.
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A bold architectural statement turns a public building into a landmark, but it is in the details where the architect becomes the real storyteller.
-- Curtis W. Fentress -
Some architects have a preconceived notion of what a building should be
-- Curtis W. Fentress -
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It takes a great client to create great architecture.
-- Curtis W. Fentress -
But then architects don't build their own houses.
-- Damien Hirst -
I'm somebody who likes codes and ciphers and chases and artwork and architecture, and all the things you find in a Robert Langdon thriller.
-- Dan Brown -
Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.
-- Daniel Burnham -
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To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history, but to articulate it.
-- Daniel Libeskind -
Cities are the greatest creations of humanity.
-- Daniel LibeskindSource : "The rise and rise of the skyscraper". edition.cnn.com. July 4, 2005.
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I love antique architecture, so if I have any indulgences, I have owned and renovated and reconstructed a lot of old houses.
-- Daryl Hall -
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For me, architecture is a social act,
-- David AdjayeSource : "A Sense of Place" by Calvin Tomkins, www.newyorker.com. September 23, 2013.
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The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it.
-- David Chipperfield -
Britain gets the architecture it deserves. We don’t value architecture, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to pay for it and the architect isn’t trusted.
-- David Chipperfield -
A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.
-- David Chipperfield -
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Architecture has curled up in a ball and it's about itself. It has found itself either as a freakshow, where you're not sure if it's good or bad but at least it's interesting, or at the behest of forces of commerce.
-- David ChipperfieldSource : "David Chipperfield: A master of permanence comes home" by Rowan Moore, www.theguardian.com. February 05, 2011.
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I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age.
-- David ChipperfieldSource : "David Chipperfield Talks Architecture and Luxury". Interview with Jonathan Glancey, www.architecturaldigest.com. January 31, 2013.
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Britain loves a bargain, but you don't get good, lasting architecture on the cheap.
-- David Chipperfield -
Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.
-- Dean Koontz -
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In Los Angeles, by the time you're 35, you're older than most of the buildings.
-- Delia Ephron -
Architecture can't force people to connect, it can only plan the crossing points, remove barriers, and make the meeting places useful and attractive.
-- Denise Scott BrownSource : Interview with Andrea Tamas, www.archdaily.com. August 2009.
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We have no sociology of architecture. Architects are unaccustomed to social analysis and mistrust it; sociologists have fatter fish to fry.
-- Denise Scott Brown -
At about five I knew I was going to be an architect because my mother had studied architecture. I thought it was women's work. I had a proprietary feeling about architecture. I could own it because my mother owned it.
-- Denise Scott Brown -
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Art and architecture -- all the arts -- do not have to exist in isolation,
-- Donald Judd -
If proportion is the good breeding of architecture, symmetry, or the answering of one part to another, may be defined as the sanity of decoration.
-- Edith Wharton -
When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.
-- Edward Steichen -
There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons.
-- Edwin Lutyens -
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When an architect is asked what his best building is, he usually answers, "The next one."
-- Emilio Ambasz -
Princeton is a sublime undergraduate university. It has a good architecture school.
-- Emilio Ambasz -
Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
-- Ernest Hemingway -
It is very difficult to build contemporary architecture in Italy
-- Fabio Novembre -
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New York is the cubist, the futurist city. It expresses in its architecture, its life, its spirit, the modern thought.
-- Francis Picabia -
Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in.
-- Frank Gehry -
There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.
-- Frank Gehry -
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Chicago's one of the rare places where architecture is more visible.
-- Frank Gehry -
Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright -
All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright -
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A building is not just a place to be but a way to be.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright -
Architecture in general is frozen music.
-- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph SchellingSource : 'Philosophie der Kunst' (1809)
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I love a lot of things, and I'm pretty much obsessive about most things I do, whether it be gardening, or architecture, or music. I'd be an obsessive hairdresser.
-- Gates McFadden -
Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.
-- Geoffrey Jellicoe -