Architect Quotes

Ethnology, based merely on Language and Physiology, is like Geology based only on Mineralogy and Chemistry.

James Fergusson (architect)

When one understands the principles of design, his taste will have something more solid as a basis than mere whim or fancy, which in the untutored is more likely to be bad than good. Acquainted with the rules of good design he will not accept articles made in defiance of them.

I would like to offer an illustration. Imagine a house which is well designed from a material or practical point of view.... Apart from these physio-functional demands, there are also psycho-functional demands which correspond with our optical, phonetic and tactile experiences. Until now, mankind has attempted to satisfy these 'supra-material' demands with a painting on the wall or a sculpture in a room.... the architecture of the future will have to destroy this duality. Its task will be to express completely and fulfill all our demands.

Theo van Doesburg

Per definition, architecture is a service for the whole human being. As such, architecture includes a material and an immaterial aspect; it has to meet rational and irrational requirements.

Justus Dahinden

A satisfactory history of architecture has not yet been written, because we are still not accustomed to thinking in terms of space, and because historians of architecture have failed to apply a coherent method of studying buildings from a spatial point of view.

I think white is the most wonderful color of all, because within it one can find every color of the rainbow.

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.

Maybe I had to stop photographing so that I could learn to touch.

Gravity is measured by the bottom of the foot; we trace the density and texture of the ground through our soles. Standing barefoot on a smooth glacial rock by the sea at sunset, and sensing the warmth of the sun-heated stone through one's soles, is an extraordinarily healing experience, making one part of the eternal cycle of nature. One senses the slow breathing of the earth.

Juhani Pallasmaa

True architecture exists only where man stands in the center.

Hitler had a great gift for adjusting - consciously or intuitively - to his surroundings.... With enormous histrionic intuition he could shape his behavior to changing situations.

Cities must urge urban planners and architects to reinforce pedestrianism as an integrated city policy to develop lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities. It is equally urgent to strengthen the social function of city space as a meeting place that contributes toward the aims of social sustainability and an open and democratic society.

Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures, culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood.

Architecture does not reach its highest estate until it is so infused with imagination and fancy - not undisciplined imagination or capricious fancy - that the ordered fabric delights the eye of every intelligent observer and excites emotions like a poem.

Henry Van Brunt

Architecture is not about building the impossible, which we can do if we have enough money and enough tools and enough computers, it is about building what is appropriate and about attaining beauty through such an approach. I describe this premise as inherent buildability and I believe it is central to what I do.

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

Richard Roth, Jr.

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

Tho marriage be a lottery in which there are a wondrous many blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot in which the only heaven on earth is written.

Certainly architecture is concerned with much more than just its physical attributes. It is a many-layered thing. Beneath and beyond the strata of function and structure, materials and texture, lie the deepest and most compulsive layers of all.

When Art struggles, it succeeds; when revelling in its own successes, it as singularly fails.

Owen Jones (architect)

Some architects think of clients only as sources of work and income but most good architecture is in fact the result of successful design collaboration between a talented architect and an enlightened, motivated client.

Good architecture never deceives the eye, even for a moment.

John Belcher (architect)

... talking as though the Standard Oil Company was the smallest thing he owned.

Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.

William McDonough

There is hope in honest error; none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist

Charles Rennie Mackintosh