Architect Quotes

Michelangelo

Le Corbusier

El Greco

Frank Lloyd Wright

Antoni Gaudí

Alvar Aalto

Giorgio Vasari

Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;
A lamp unto my feet, that sun was given;
And death was safety and great joy to find;
But dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven.

Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts), when the infamous Pruitt Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite.

It was never shameful to learn from any teacher things that are useful to know.

Leon Battista Alberti

As much as the needs of fact, the needs of the spirit and the senses, must be satisfied. Architecture is as much a part of the realm of art as it is of technology; the fusion of thinking and feeling.

Lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us
O'er the world's tempestuous sea;
Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us,
For we have no help but Thee;
Yet possessing every blessing,
If our God our Father be.

Men may be divided into two types: men of words and men of action. The first speaks; the latter act. I am of the second group. I lack the means to express myself adequately. I would not be able to explain to anyone my artistic concepts. I have not yet concretised them. I never had time to reflect on them. My hours have been spent in my work.

I hold the imitation of color to be the greatest difficulty of art.

Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed?

The World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a living representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his belief in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness.

Minoru Yamasaki

A design may be called organic when there is an harmonious organization of the parts within the whole, according to structure, material, and purpose. Within this definition there can be no vain ornamentation or superfluity, but the part of beauty is nonetheless great-in ideal choice of material, in visual refinement, and in the rational elegance of things intended for use.

'Form follows profit' is the aesthetic principle of our times.

No life is well-rounded without the subtle inspiration of beauty.

Beatrix Farrand

Buildings are deeply emotive structures which form our psyche. People think they're just things they maneuver through, but the makeup of a person is influenced by the nature of spaces.

After I finished my books, I felt I had to do another one and I thought that if I were to choose a subject, it had to be mosques.

Wahbi Al-Hariri

I do not think you can find a reason for everything you make.

Unfortunately there are still people in other areas who regard New York City not as part of the United States, but as a sort of excrescence fastened to our Eastern shore and peopled by the less venturesome waves of foreigners who failed to go West to the genuine American frontier.

It was perhaps a bad moment to undertake an architectural guide to the City of London. There are, at the time of writing, still whole areas lying waste after bombing in the Second World War. A number of the City churches, also, are not yet repaired or restored. Yet the publication of this volume was much asked for; so I decided to undertake it in spite of these disadvantages.

Nikolaus Pevsner

Solemn Australians think that an interest in design is a superficial and trivial interest. This is actually an improvement, they used to think it effeminate and vaguely immoral.

By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet.Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil. What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.

Unfortunately, buildings are not like drawings. You can't just erase them.

Richard Roth, Jr.

If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of that button, how these people dressed, built their houses, how they lived, what was their religion, their art, their mentality.

To plant is but a part of landscape composition; to co-ordinate is all.

Christopher Tunnard

The American dream has always depended on the dialogue between the present and the past. In our architecture, as in all our other arts-indeed, as in our political and social culture as a whole-ours has been a struggle to formulate and sustain a usable past.

Robert A. M. Stern

Courage lies in being oneself, in showing complete independence, in loving what one loves, in discovering the deep roots of one's feelings.

Fernand Pouillon

Our aim is to create an island of tranquility in our own country which, amid the joyful hum of arts and crafts, would be welcome to anyone who professes faith in Ruskin and Morris.