Quotes About Architecture

The universe is not a rigid and immutable edifice where independent matter is housed in independent space and time; it is on the contrary an amorphous continuum, without any fixed architecture, plastic and variable, constantly subject to change and distortion.

was an aesthetically pleasing, yet highly functional, combination of old and new.

We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.... a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.

Architecture is the printing-press of all ages, and gives a history of the state of the society in which it was erected, from the cromlech of the Druids to those toy-shops of royal bad taste

Technological considerations are of great importance to architecture and cities in the informational society.

Until we become the architects of a society that is truly free and ecological, it will always seem that when the human brain is not adaptive, it is more often destructive than creative.

The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.

My hope is that light, flexible architecture might bring about a new and open society.

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

A house is not a machine to live in. It is the shell of man, his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation.

Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us.

All architecture, which does not express serenity, fails in its spiritual mission. Thus, it has been a mistake to abandon the shelter of walls for the inclemency of large areas of glass.

Glasgow is still full of churches built in the last century. Half of them have been turned into warehouses.

A squat gray building of only thirty-four stories.

One day one would get up at six o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avon—anywhere. And within a radius of twenty miles there were always Norman churches and Tudor mansions to be seen in the course of an afternoon's excursion. Somehow they never did get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel that the bicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really might get up at six.

Here, in spite of the peculiar hideousness of the architecture, there were renewals of transcendental otherness, hints of the morning's heaven.

Nothing can exceed in beauty and in vision-inducing power the mosaics of gardens and buildings in the great Omayyad mosque at Damascus.

A world of houses where Californian, the Gothic or Moorish, dwarf Parthenons, Greek temples with lights and venetian blinds mixed with Renaissance villas.

Having chosen his own death, Henri Christophe would never know the corruption of his flesh, flesh fused with the very stuff of the fortress, inscribed in its architecture, integrated with its body bristling with flying buttresses. Le Bonnet del'Eveque, the whole mountains, had become the mausoleum of the first King of Haiti.

We create the kind of markets we want. If we build elegant infrastructure, we have elegant markets.

skyline reveals a city's purpose and character. Oxford had its dreaming spires; Manhattan its glittering towers; Edinburgh its eccentric spikes.

It's tangible, it's solid, it's beautiful. It's artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.

I love building spaces: architecture, furniture, all of it, probably more than fashion. The development procedure is more tactile. It's about space and form and it's something you can share with other people.

[Skin is] the first line of defense for the body. … Our building skins should be more similar to human skin.