Quotes About Architecture

Do I provoke as a method of investigation? Of course. That's the essence of architecture. Do I do it with gusto? I do.

The general public will almost always stand behind the traditionalists. In the public eye, architecture is about comfort, about shelter, about bricks and mortar.

May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good.

A painter, a sculptor, a writer, they can express freely. They don't affect society as a whole. We build buildings that have a purpose, that stay there for hundreds of years or decades.

Mission accomplished. The Museum of Modern Art's wide-open, tall-ceilinged, super-reinforced second floor was for all intents and purposes built to accommodate monumental installations and gigantic sculptures, should the need arise. It has arisen.

Great architects like Taut, Mendelsohn, and Gropius built some astonishing buildings which were to change the way architects around the world thought. Brecht and Weill forever changed musical theatre; Kaethe Kollwitz and others changed German perceptions of the purposes of art.

When drawings of the main buildings I have designed in the last five years are juxtaposed, the fact that they all involve the pursuit of certain configurations is obvious to anyone.

When museums are built these days, architects, directors, and trustees seem most concerned about social space: places to have parties, eat dinner, wine-and-dine donors. Sure, these are important these days - museums have to bring in money - but they gobble up space and push the art itself far away from the entrance.

To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.

I think architects tend to believe that they can almost do anything, which is a wonderful characteristic, but in some cases you just fall flat.

In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It's that contrast we like.

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.

Form follows beauty.

It was the drawing that led me to architecture, the search for light and astonishing forms.

Buildings are forms of performances.

I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.

San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities.

That's only in America. We don't have French doors in France.

Chinese buildings are like American buildings, with big footprints. People don't care about daylight or fresh air.

Form follows function.

When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.

We always correct people who say, 'You're trying to make this look better.' Well yes, we want it to look better, but that's easy. The look and the function are one and the same. They are not separate. It looks good because it functions beautifully. That message is very hard.

the floor was expensive cream-colored travertine

Building becomes architecture only when the mind of man consciously takes it and tries with all his resources to make it beautiful, to put concordance, sympathy with nature, and all that into it. Then you have architecture.