The Architect Says
The Architect Says
The Architect Says
“The first principle of architectural beauty is that the essential lines of a construction be determined by a
perfect appropriateness to its use.” GUSTAVE EIFFEL
“When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I believe in architecture. Architecture is the mother of the arts.I
like to believe that architecture connects the present with the past and the tangible with the intangible.”
Richard Meier
“A museum is a place where one should lose one’s head.” Renzo Piano
“The dialogue between client and architect is about as intimate as any conversation you can have, because
when you’re talking about building a house, you’re talking about dreams.” Robert A.M. Stern
“As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially
unknown.” Norman Foster
“Architecture is an expression of values.” Norman Foster
“Architecture begins where engineering ends.” Walter Gropius
“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” Frank Gehry
“98% of what gets built today is shit.” Frank Gehry
“My work is not about 'form follows function’, but
'form follows beauty' or, even better, 'form follows feminine.” Oscar Niemeyer
“You cannot simply put something new into a place. You have to absorb what you see around you, what exists
on the land, and then use that knowledge along with contemporary thinking to interpret what yousee.”
Tadao Ando
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“Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder.”
Daniel Libeskind
“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty.
But when I’ve finished, if the solution is not beautiful I
“Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect’s task therefore, is to make those sentiments more
precise.” Adolf Loos
“Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long.” Kenzo Tange
“Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space… On the one hand it’s
about shelter, but it’s also about pleasure. “ Zaha Hadid
“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.” Charles Eames
“The architecture we remember is that which never consoles or comforts us.” Peter Eisenman
“To me the drawn language is a very revealing language: one can see in a few lines whether a man is really an
architect.” Eero Saarinen
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a
house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” Eliel Saarinen
“A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being
designed, and in the end must be unmeasured.” Louis Kahn
“Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, and love.” Louis Kahn
“The essential element in architecture is the manipulation of space. It is this essence which separates it from
all other arts.” Paul Rudolph
“Ornamentation has been, is, and will be polychrome. Nature does not present us with an object in
monochrome, totally uniform with respect to colour – not in vegetation, not in geology, not in topography, not
in the animal kingdom. Always the contrast of colour is more or less lively, and for this reason we must colour
wholly or in part every architectural element.” Antoni Gaudi
“I believe that the material doesn’t need to be strong to be used to build a strong structure. The strength of
the structure has nothing to do with strength of the material.” Shigeru Ban
“For me, the excitement in architecture revolves around the idea and the phenomenon of the experience of
that idea. Residences offer almost immediate gratification. You can shape space, light, and materials to a
degree that you sometimes can't in larger projects.” Steven Holl
“There is a rumour that I can’t draw and never could. This is probably because I work so much with models.
Models are one of the most beautiful design tools, but I still do the finest drawings you can imagine.”
Jørn Utzon
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“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood. Daniel Burnham
Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not
die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.”
Daniel Burnham
“Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a
splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together.” Alvar Aalto
“My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is
because I believe we - architects - can affect the quality of life of the people.” Richard Rogers
“There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons.” Edwin Lutyens
“Architects have made architecture too complex. We need to simplify it and use a language that everyone can
understand.” Toyo Ito
“In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function.”
Michael Graves
“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
“The purpose of architecture is to create an atmosphere in which man can live, work, and enjoy.”
Minoru Yamasaki
“Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves.” Julia Morgan
“Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.”
Arthur Erickson
“Architecture is the design of space, both interior and exterior. So it’s much more closely related to dance
than it is to painting or sculpture.” Bruce John Graham
“Architecture is not a private affair; even a house must serve a whole family and its friends, and most
buildings are used by everybody, people of all walks of life. If a building is to meet the needs of all the people,
the architect must look for some common ground of understanding and experience.” John Portman
“The great thing about being an architect is you can walk into your dreams.” Harold Wagoner
“Architecture is an art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere
and when this environment produces well being.” Luis Barragan
“Architecture isn't just about creating new buildings, sometimes its about retuning what's already there.”
John Pawson
“Our ultimate goal, therefore, was the composite but inseparable work of art --- the great building --- in
which the old dividing line between monumental and decorative elements would have disappeared
forever.”Walter Gropius
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