Quotes About Architecture

When we talk of architecture, people usually think of something static; this is wrong. What we are thinking of is an architecture similar to the dynamic and musical architecture achieved by the Futurist musician Pratella. Architecture is found in the movement of colours, of smoke from a chimney and in metallic structures, when they are expressed in states of mind which are violent and chaotic.

I recently wrote a piece on comics in architecture - I was talking about the three kinds of comics I pay attention to: the Franco-Belgian, the Japanese manga, and the American comics. I started thinking about the relationship between Japanese manga and Japanese architecture, or Franco-Belgian bande dessinée versus Franco-Belgian architecture, it began to make sense; there are parallels to the modes of operations and the cultures they belong to. If I didn't force myself to write, I would have no forum to clarify these thoughts. Writing is really helpful.

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

We have to change from 'ego-architecture' to 'eco-architecture.'

In architecture the pride of man, his triumph over gravitation, his will to power, assume a visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms.

All but universally, human architecture values front elevations over back entrances, public spaces over private. Danny Jessup says that this aspect of architecture is also a reflection of human nature, that most people care more about their appearance than they do about their souls.

At about five I knew I was going to be an architect because my mother had studied architecture. I thought it was women's work. I had a proprietary feeling about architecture. I could own it because my mother owned it.

What is now called "green architecture" is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.

Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real.

I'd been to Stourhead and was inspired by the perfect parity between architecture and art; in fact, the architecture is the art. I wrote a piece called 'Not Sculpture Park,' because most of these things become car parks for bought-in sculpture. The artists should be working with the site, not just plonking pieces down.

New security architecture is being laid down in the Northern Middle East, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, in which pro-Iranian governments are consolidating their grip on the territory and they're backed by Russia, to a large degree. And this has caused great grief and consternation in Saudi Arabia and amongst many of the United States' allies, Israel, the Gulf countries, Turkey, because they see this new architecture of security and Iranian influence and Russian influence as something that's very bad for them.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

If you look at the Earth without architecture, its sometimes a little bit unpleasant. So there is this basic human need to do shelter in the broadest sense of the word, whether its a movie theater or a simple log cabin in the mountains. This is the core of architecture: To provide a space for human beings.

So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but-instead-exalting the simple laws of common sense-or of super-sense if you prefer-determining form by way of the nature of materials.

Architecture arises out of our need to shelter the human animal in a spatial environment and to enclose the social animal in a group space. In this sense architecture serves our institutions and expresses the values of our culture.

If a project has not achieved a system architecture, including its rationale, the project should not proceed to full-scale system development. Specifying the architecture as a deliverable enables its use throughout the development and maintenance process.

I really wanted to go to architecture school but the demands of playing D-1 Collegiate soccer just take over so I tried to empathize architecture as much as I could.

I did make several trips to the very wonderful [Georgia] O'Keeffe museum. Besides the art (my favorite paintings are from her Pelvis series) my favorite thing about the museum is the architecture. I love how enormously tall the doors are - it is like going into a church. There is also something home-like about the layout of the museum. I wish I could live there!

There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.

Architecture is art, nothing else.

I'd so much rather have exciting architecture that causes one to stop, breathe, and reflect on the potential of the human mind, the craft, and exploring things.

A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.

To have a young person speak back, to hand him the microphone for his first-person utterances, you'd have to have an imagined architecture, otherwise people would say you're putting words in their mouths.

A building does not have to be an important work of architecture to become a first-rate landmark. Landmarks are not created by architects. They are fashioned by those who encounter them after they are built. The essential feature of a landmark is not its design, but the place it holds in a city's memory. Compared to the place it occupies in social history, a landmark's artistic qualities are incidental.

I just love architecture, and I just love the idea of being someone who sees the world differently and doing everything you can do in order to actualize that dream. And really sticking to your guns when everyone else is telling you that you're crazy.

As an architect, I try to be guided not by habit but by a conscious sense of the past-by precedent, thoughtfully considered...As an artist, I frankly write about what I like in architecture: complexity and contradiction. From what we find we like-what we are easily attracted to-we can learn much of what we really are.

There is no piece of music that could relate to anything else but itself and its world. It is truly an independent. The one thing coplanar with music is the compositional aspect, the fact that you are composing something. Architecture is essentially a score, and what happens with it depends on the people who play it, enjoy it, use it, or hate it.

Modern architecture does not mean the use of immature new materials; the main thing is to refine materials in a more human direction.

Everything in the service needs to preach - architecture, lighting, songs, prayers, fellowship, the smell - it all preaches. All five senses must be engaged to experience God.

I enjoy art, architecture, museums, churches and temples; anything that gives me insight into the history and soul of the place I'm in. I can also be a beach bum - I like to laze in the shade of a palm tree with a good book or float in a warm sea at sundown.

Art is more than a series of images that are disembodied. Art is objects that live in real places, economies, spaces, architecture.

Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world? It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind... it is the prince of mathematics, and the sciences founded on it are absolutely certain. It has measured the distances and sizes of the stars it has discovered the elements and their location... it has given birth to architecture and to perspective and to the divine art of painting.

I don't really know what's going to happen 10,000 years from now. We've been biologically modern for, what, almost 200,000 years? Let's go back to the cave paintings: I think the moment that someone landed a charcoal on a wall to describe reality, that's language already - that happened on a vertical surface, which, even though they didn't build it, somehow we could understand it as architecture because there's a cavity that separates the inside and outside. That's 40,000 years in the past.

I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity.

Architecture can't force people to connect, it can only plan the crossing points, remove barriers, and make the meeting places useful and attractive.

In architecture, to do anything beyond object form is often treated as something extra-disciplinary - something outside the discipline that has nothing to do with art. So I'm making it clear that this is an artistic choice. It's not everyone's artistic choice. Some people should choose only to make object form because that's what gives them pleasure. But there are people for whom aesthetic pleasure comes from doing something else, and why would you deny that choice? It's another autonomous choice.

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

when your field is architecture, you go visit the great cathedrals of the world. My field was relationships. I got married many times. I was practicing. I didn't date much; I just would get married. I thought, why waste time?

All the same, the fundamental truths which govern that art are still unchangeable; just as the principles of mechanics must always govern architecture, whether the building be made of wood, stone, iron or concrete; just as the principles of harmony govern music of whatever kind. It is still necessary, then, to establish the principles of war.

You have to lead, in the case of a game show, a contestant through the architecture of the show. So there's a lot of rules there, literal and implied, that you have to navigate.

I studied architecture in New York. So, really I was very moved, like everyone else, to try to contribute something that has that resonance and profundity of it means to all of us.

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.

The conservative values that are emerging, it may not effect architecture immediately but it will effect society and that's what worries me.

Taj Mahal was built up by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who wanted his beloved wife to be remembered by one and all, with help of architectural geniuses like Ustad Isa, Isa Mohammad Effendi and Puru of Persia. The result that came across was a fine piece of Mughal architecture, fused with Persian, Islamic, and Indian architectural styles; or is believed so by many.

Beliefs constitute the basic stratum, that which lies deepest, in the architecture of our life. By them we live, and by the same token we rarely think of them.... One may symbolize the individual life as a bank of issue. The bank lives on the credit of a gold reserve which is rarely seen, which lies at the bottom of metal coffers hidden in the vaults of the building. The most elementary caution will suggest that from time to time the effective condition of these guaranties--of these credences, one might say, that are the basis of credit--be passed in review.

I think that as good architecture enhances a city, a good cut enhances the definition and expression of a face.

Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues.

I only like decoration if it plays second to the architecture of a dress.