Best 659 quotes in «architecture quotes» category

With a mixture of naïveté and British arrogance, she had always thought of London as the center of all culture and knowledge, but Paris was a revelation. The city was astonishingly modern, making London look like a dowdy country cousin. And yet for all its intellectual and social advancements, the streets of Paris were nearly medieval in appearance; dark, narrow and crooked as they twined through arrondissements of artfully shaped buildings. It was a messy, delightful assault to the senses, with architecture that ranged from the gothic spires of ancient churches to the solid grandeur of the Arc de Triomphe.

With the balcony doors completely open and folded up, his small room acquired an infinite vista. Somewhere on the horizon, water finally worked up the courage to embrace the sky.

With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the pains of life too hard to bear, I have nothing to do; and, so far as it may be possible, I shall avoid the expression of any opinion as to the objective truth or falsehood of the systems of theological speculation of which I may find occasion to speak. From my present point of view, theology is regarded as a natural product of the operations of the human mind, under the conditions of its existence, just as any other branch of science, or the arts of architecture, or music, or painting are such products. Like them, theology has a history. Like them also, it is to be met with in certain simple and rudimentary forms; and these can be connected by a multitude of gradations, which exist or have existed, among people of various ages and races, with the most highly developed theologies of past and present times.

Writing on architecture is not like history or poetry.

You are my other self

You cannot defend your design without knowing what you're designing for.

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

A bold architectural statement turns a public building into a landmark, but it is in the details where the architect becomes the real storyteller.

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

A languid janitor bears His lantern through colonnades And the architecture swoons.

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

After about the first Millennium, Italy was the cradle of Romanesque architecture, which spread throughout Europe, much of it extending the structural daring with minimal visual elaboration.

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.

A Gothic church is a petrified religion.

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest of all the arts.

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it.

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.

A lot of my work is about questioning the stability and permanence of architecture, and, in turn, the stability of society.

All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.

a man who builds a house never really dies.

A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy.

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

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.

Angkor is perhaps the greatest of Man's essays in rectangular architecture that has yet been brought to life.

An important work of architecture will create polemics.

Any work of architecture that has with it some discussion, some polemic, I think is good. It shows that people are interested, people are involved.

Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.

Architecture, in itself, at the end of the day, is a rational profession.

Architecture is about aging well, about precision and authenticity. There is much more to the success of a building than what you can see. Im not suggesting that gestural architecture is always superficial, but solid reasoning has its place.

Architecture is about public space held by buildings.

Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance.

Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise.

Architecture is bound to situation. And I feel like the site is a metaphysical link, a poetic link, to what a building can be.

Architecture is essentially Human; it is the Human spirit manifesting itself. For when a Man builds, there, you've got him; you know exactly what, who and how that Man is.

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

Architecture is much more than a profession; It's a discipline.

Architecture is not a profession, it is a discipline.

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

Architecture has to be greater than just architecture. It has to address social values, as well as technical and aesthetic values.

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

Architecture is not about space but about time.

Architecture is not a profession for the faint-hearted, the weak-willed, or the short-lived.

Architecture is not merely national but clearly has local ties in that it is rooted in the earth.

Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms.

Architecture is to make us know and remember who we are.

Architecture should be dedicated to keeping the outside out and the inside in.

Architecture struck me between the eye and the eyeball.