Quotes About Design

Given the gulf between the excellence of Italian design, educated by the beauties of the past, and the unremitting tastelessness of British modernity, it is not a coincidence that Italy has one of the largest trading surpluses of any nation, while Britain has one of the largest deficits.

Nothing is truly beautiful unless it cannot be used for anything; everything that is useful is ugly because it is the expression of some need, and those of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor and infirm nature.

Accident is nature's way of starting a design; design is a man's way of looking at the accidents.

My buildings don't speak in words but by means of their own spaciousness.

But I absolutely believe that architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behaviour.

The aesthetic of architecture has to be rooted in a broader idea about human activities like walking, relaxing and communicating. Architecture thinks about how these activities can be given added value.

You might say that when you step inside, you're entering a honorific space, but that's something totally different than experiencing it. And in architecture the experience comes first. That has the deepest effect on us.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. —C.A.R. Hoare, The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture How

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed – a knife – a purse – and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature.

The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.

I love hi-tech kitchens, but that doesn't necessarily mean full of appliances.

Racetracks are designed to make it as difficult as possible to get around that corner fast. And some ramps, by necessity, are that way, too.

I would say that an understanding of man's intrinsic needs, and of the necessity to search for a climate in which those needs could be realized, is fundamental to the education of the designer.

An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties.

I feel like everything needs to be stylised; that's always been my mindset.

Everyone is trying to jump on the biomimic bandwagon. But a cork floor is not biomimicry. Neither is using bacteria to clean water.

Nest really came out of a process where I was trying to design the most connected and the most green home that I knew of. I was curious of just about everything that goes into a home and building a home.

I love HGTV. I love the Food Network.

It's really easy to get colors right. It's really hard to get black - and neutrals - right. Black is certainly a color but it's also an illusion.

I've very into grays and neutrals. They match with basically everything.

I do know that I would never - though you should never say never - work with a decorator, because I don't want to see the touch of someone else in my own space.

Every new car, you open the door, and you look at all those internal mellifluous swoopy bits, and they have no meaning.

It's always nice to have new clothes made for you.