Architecture Quotes

"Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building." John Osborne

"Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic." Antonio Gaudi

"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

"Architecture tends to consume everything else, it has become one's entire life." Arne Jacobsen

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

"Architects in the past have tended to concentrate their attention on the building as a static object. I believe dynamics are more important: the dynamics of people, their interaction with spaces and environmental condition." John Portman

"A house is a machine for living in." Le Corbusier

"A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom." Ayn Rand

"One my favorite things is to go to the provinces of Russia and see the 18th century wood churches with the onion dome architecture. These humble wonders of incredible imagination of architects that were obviously not living in places like Paris or London, but they've created these amazing churches." Andre Leon Talley

"Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul." Louis Kahn

"The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture." Salvador Dali

"A city building, you experience when you walk; a suburban building, you experience when you drive." Helmut Jahn

"An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site." Frank Lloyd Wright

"Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves." Julia Morgan

"Architecture is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that's all." Harry Seidler

"Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness." Frank Gehry

"As a designer, the mission with which we have been charged is simple: providing space at the right cost." Harry von Zell

"Buildings should serve people, not the other way around." John Portman

"But the building's identity resided in the ornament." Louis Sullivan

"Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy." Jimmy Breslin

"Cities are the greatest creations of humanity." Daniel Libeskind

"At a certain point, I just put the building and the art impulse together. I decided that building was a legitimate way to make sculpture." Martin Puryear

"Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins." Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

"Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light." Le Corbusier

"Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea." Yoshio Taniguchi

"Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise." Adolf Loos

"A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable." Louis Kahn

"Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture." Arthur Erickson

"Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture." Arthur Erickson

"Mind you, I've always been musical... Mother used to sit me on her knee and I'd whisper, 'Mummy, Mummy, sing me a lullaby do,' and she'd say: 'Certainly my angel, my wee bundle of happiness, hold my beer while I fetch me banjo.'" Les Dawson