Gallery of ARCHITECTURAL QUOTATIONS

2007-12-19T23:23:00.000+05:30

soME INteREsting QUotes by SOme famOUS and SomE unKNOwn archiTECTs.

Style is trendy and fleeting. Bad taste is timeless.
Anonymous
Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in. (on using a grid)
Frank Gehry
The scary cousin in architecture's dysfunctional family (on Frank Gehry)
Zev Borrow
When a building is as good as that one, fuck the art. (On Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim as a place to experience art)
Philip Johnson
Ram-shack-le /'ram-shak-el/ adj. : Pertaining to a certain order of architecture, otherwise known as Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects preferred the Ironic. Recent additions to the White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of the Dorians. They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a brick.
Ambrose Bierce
Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson
Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Among the planets of the arts, architecture is the dark side of the moon.
Bruno Zevi
Ignorance transcends architecture.
James Gaskin
The most important question when any new architecture is introduced is "So what?"
Anonymous
When does a building actually become a built?
Le Corbusier
ar-chi-tect \är-ke-,tekt\ n. One who believes that conception comes before erection.
Rob Daly
Home is where you hang your Architect.
Clare Booth Luce
Q: What would I do if I won a million dollars?
A: Probably just keep practicing architecture till it was gone.
The Management
We shape our buildings: thereafter they shape us.
Sir Winston Churchill
The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.
Samuel Taylor
Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.
Thomas Fuller
Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.
Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe
All architects want to live beyond their deaths.
Philip Johnson
I don't think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.
Roy Lichtenstein
Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollonian condition: here it is the mighty act of will, the will which moves mountains, the intoxication of the strong will, which demands artistic _expression. The most powerful men have always inspired the architects; the architect has always been influenced by power.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Le Corbusier was the sort of relentlessly rational intellectual that only France loves wholeheartedly, the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird.
Tom Wolfe
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
John Ruskin
No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
John Ruskin
Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
E.B.White
Form ever follows function.
Louis Henry Sullivan
Less is more
Mies
Less is a bore.
Robert Venturi
Less is more work.
Patric McCue
Less is more, except when it is not enough...
unknown
True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
Henry David Thoreau
In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture.
Nancy Banks-Smith
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright
All fine architectural values are human vales, else not valuable.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Architecture is "frozen music"... Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Where do architects and designers get their ideas? The answer, of course, is mainly from other architects and designers, so is it mere casuistry to distinguish between tradition and plagiarism?
Nancy Banks-Smith
Use your eyes; plagiarize. (On borrowing design strategies from other cultures.)
Steven Ehrlich
Liberate the perimeter for the people! (On pushing the managers towards the core so that everybody can share the view in high rise offices.)
Laura Hartman
Architecture is easy: you just stare at the paper until droplets of blood appear on your forehead.
Unknown
Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Ambrose Bierce
You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.
Charles, Prince of Wales
But what if we are dealing with fools? (On design juries)
Mies
Commodity, firmness, delight...
Vitruvius
Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
Seneca

Gallery of ARCHITECTURAL QUOTATIONS

2007-12-19T22:49:00.000+05:30

SOme quoTES from soME FAMouS and SomE UnKnoWN archiTECTs.

Style is trendy and fleeting. Bad taste is timeless.
Anon.

Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in. (on using a grid)
Frank Gehry

The scary cousin in architecture's dysfunctional family (on Frank Gehry)
Zev Borrow

When a building is as good as that one, fuck the art. (On Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim as a place to experience art)
Philip Johnson

Ram-shack-le /'ram-shak-el/ adj. : Pertaining to a certain order of architecture, otherwise known as Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects preferred the Ironic. Recent additions to the White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of the Dorians. They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a brick.
Ambrose Bierce

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson

Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
Frank Lloyd Wright Lloyd Wright

Among the planets of the arts, architecture is the dark side of the moon.
Bruno Zevi

Ignorance transcends architecture.
James Gaskin

The most important question when any new architecture is introduced is "So what?"
Anonymous

When does a building actually become a built?
Le Corbusier

ar-chi-tect \är-ke-,tekt\ n. One who believes that conception comes before erection.
Rob Daly

Home is where you hang your Architect.
Clare Booth Luce

Q: What would I do if I won a million dollars?
A: Probably just keep practicing architecture till it was gone.
The Management

We shape our buildings: thereafter they shape us.
Sir Winston Churchill

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.
Samuel Taylor

Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.
Thomas Fuller

Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.
Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.
Philip Johnson

I don't think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.
Roy Lichtenstein

Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollonian condition: here it is the mighty act of will, the will which moves mountains, the intoxication of the strong will, which demands artistic _expression. The most powerful men have always inspired the architects; the architect has always been influenced by power.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Le Corbusier was the sort of relentlessly rational intellectual that only France loves wholeheartedly, the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird.
Tom Wolfe

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
John Ruskin

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
John Ruskin

Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
E.B.White

Form ever follows function.
Louis Henry Sullivan

Less is more
Mies

Less is a bore.
Robert Venturi

Less is more work.
Patric McCue

Less is more, except when it is not enough...
unknown

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
Henry David Thoreau

In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture.
Nancy Banks-Smith

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright

All fine architectural values are human vales, else not valuable.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Architecture is "frozen music"... Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
Ludwig Van Beethoven

Where do architects and designers get their ideas? The answer, of course, is mainly from other architects and designers, so is it mere casuistry to distinguish between tradition and plagiarism? Nancy Banks-Smith

Use your eyes; plagiarize. (On borrowing design strategies from other cultures.)
Steven Ehrlich

Liberate the perimeter for the people! (On pushing the managers towards the core so that everybody can share the view in high rise offices.)
Laura Hartman

Architecture is easy: you just stare at the paper until droplets of blood appear on your forehead.
Unknown

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Ambrose Bierce

You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.
Charles, Prince of Wales

But what if we are dealing with fools? (On design juries)
Mies

Commodity, firmness, delight...
Vitruvius

Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
Seneca