Architects And Their Quotes & Sayings

Then she decided she was ready to die.
But before she did, she asked the poets to record these moments
in song, and the architects to carve the song in marble,
and the marble to be extracted from the most secret veins
of the earth and placed where no man could see it,
because that is the nature of love, because one walks alone
through the ruins of the heart, because the young must sleep
with their eyes open, because the angels tremble
from so much beauty, because memory moves in orbits
of absence, because she holds her hands out in the rain,
and rain remembers nothing, not even how it became itself. — Eric Gamalinda

Planners, architects of city design, and those they have led along with them in their beliefs are not consciously disdainful of the importance of knowing how things work. On the contrary, they have gone to great pains to learn what saints and sages of modern orthodox planning have said about how cities ought to work and what ought to be good for people and business in them. They take this with such devotion that when contradictory reality intrudes, threatening tho shatter their dearly won learning, they must shrug reality aside. — Jane Jacobs

If the original architects of the 'European dream' were to wake from their slumber, they would no doubt be turning in their graves at the threats to the Union posed by today's unparalleled mass migration and surge in home grown terrorism. Luckily for them, it is the nightmare of Europe's current leaders to ponder the challenges of reinstating national borders, curbing free movement of people, combating extremism, all of which in turn may lead to disintegration of the European Union itself and all that it stands for. — Alex Morritt

Can it be that the ultimate chapter of this new era of democratic freedom is going to be deformed by this growing drift toward conformity encouraged by politics and sentimental education? If so then by what name shall our national American character be justly called? Doomed to beget only curiosities or monstrosities in art, architecture and religion by artists predominant chiefly by compliance with commercial expediency?
Machine standardization is apparently growing to mean little that is inspiring to the human spirit. We see the American workman himself becoming the prey of gangsterism made official. Everything as now professionalized, in time dies spiritually. Must the innate beauty of American life succumb or be destroyed? Can we save truth as beauty and beauty as truth in our country only if truth becomes the chief concern of our serious citizens and their artists, architects and men of religion, independent of established authority? — Frank Lloyd Wright

These days, information is a commodity being sold. And designers-including the newly defined subset of information designers and information architects-have a responsible role to play. We are interpreters, not merely translators, between sender and receiver. What we say and how we say it makes a difference. If we want to speak to people, we need to know their language. In order to design for understanding, we need to understand design. — Erik Spiekermann

My most earnest prayer is that every man and every woman will get it into his or her heart that they are in very deed the architects of their lives. — Heber J. Grant

In his Dialogue "Timaeus" Plato had a demiurge to create the globe-shaped world according to musical laws, including the human soul. Fifteen hundred years later, that still found an echo in the Renaissance. And in those days the architects realized that the musical harmonies had spatial expressions
namely, the relationships of the length of strings, and spatial relationships were precisely their only concerns. Because both the world and the body and soul were composed according to musical harmonies by the demiurge architect, both the macrocosm and the microcosm, they must therefore be guided in their own architectural designs by the laws of music. — Harry Mulisch

I grew up in a time when Eames and Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright and other architects were putting their furniture and objects on the market. You could buy some of those objects on the open market. Eames was a huge influence on all of us in school. — Michael Graves

The assessment of psychological drift, that is the way in which an undirected pedestrian tends to move about in a particular quarter of the town, tending to establish natural connections between places, the zones of influence of particular institutions and public services, and so forth. It may well be objected that these techniques are un-scientific, disorderly and too subjective, but the fact remains that the Situationists are studying the actual texture of towns and their relationship to human beings more intensively than most architects and in a more down-to-pavement manner than most town planners. — Tom McDonough

First a small team writes a small system. Then they find the natural fracture lines and divide the system into relatively independent parts for expansion. The architects help choose the most appropriate fracture lines and then follow the system as a whole, keeping the big picture in mind as the groups focus on their smaller section. — Kent Beck

Many people who gain recognition and fame shape their lives by overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, only to be catapulted into new social realities over which they have less control and manage badly. Indeed, the annals of the famous and infamous are strewn with individuals who were both architects and victims of their life courses. — Albert Bandura

The surroundings householders crave are glorified autobiographies ghost-written by willing architects and interior designers who, like their clients, want to show off. — T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings

Another big step was building a house here in Stillwater. Avery's ancestry had claimed some prime property looking down along the St. Croix River. He chose to custom build their home, working endlessly with architects and builders, trying to make a perfect home for his Kane to live in. Kane insisted Avery spent too much money, and every time he gave input, it was designed to save them money. Avery nixed most of those ideas, stating very clearly this was their dream home, the perfect place for his prince to live his life in style. — Kindle Alexander

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

Nationalist conflicts and ethnic-racial tensions were greatly intensified by the territorial settlement of Europe that followed the First World War. The architects of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, however good their intentions, faced insuperable problems in attempting to satisfy the territorial demands of the new countries formed out of the wreckage of the old empires. Ethnic minorities formed sizeable parts of most of the new states in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe, offering a potential base for serious political disturbance. Almost — Ian Kershaw

Building a baseball team is like building a house. You look for the best architects, the best builders - and then you let them do their jobs. — Pat Gillick

We started with things like locating ski runs or locating a transmission line corridor or locating a new town or doing a coastal zone plan. We ourselves weren't doing the planning work, but we were doing all the mapping work for the landscape architects and planners who would subsequently incorporate the maps into their actual designs. — Jack Dangermond

Architects mostly work for privileged people, people who have money and power, Power and money are invisible, so people hire us to visualize their power and money by making monumental architecture. I love to make monuments, too, but I thought perhaps we can use our experience and knowledge more for the general public, even for those who have lost their houses in natural disasters. — Shigeru Ban

A greater awareness in architects and planners of their real value to society could, at the present, result in that rare occurrence, namely, the improvement of the quality of life as a result of architectural endeavour. — Cedric Price

Companies and their brands need to reach out and speak directly to consumers, to honor their values, and to form meaningful relationships with them. They must become architects of community, consistently demonstrating the values that their customer community expects in exchange for their loyalty and purchases. — Simon Mainwaring

Spatial intelligence is virtually left out of formal education. In kindergarten we give children blocks and sand with which to build. Then we take those things away for the next twelve years of their education and expect kids to be architects and engineers. — Ann Lewin-Benham

The members of the functional and socially mobilized under class must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable. There could be a disturbing feeling, however fleeting, of unease, even guilt. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Gardens, not buildings
Great projects start out feeling like buildings. There are architects, materials, staff, rigid timelines, permits, engineers, a structure.
It works or it doesn't.
Build something that doesn't fall down. On time.
But in fact, great projects, like great careers and relationships that last, are gardens. They are tended, they shift, they grow. They endure over time, gaining a personality and reflecting their environment. When something dies or fades away, we prune, replant and grow again.
Perfection and polish aren't nearly as important as good light, good drainage and a passionate gardener.
By all means, build. But don't finish. Don't walk away.
Here we grow. — Seth Godin

our architects need to shift their thinking away from creating the perfect end product, and instead focus on helping create a framework in which the right systems can emerge, and continue to grow as we learn more. — Sam Newman

Architects are mostly self-centered and their buildings express their ego. [They are] not social buildings to make it more comfortable for people - to make life better for people. The cities have to be designed so people can get together and talk with one another. — Jacque Fresco

The ultimate aim of education is to enable individuals to become the architects of their own education and through that process to continually reinvent themselves. — Elliot W. Eisner

To say that nothing is true, is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted, is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic. — Oliver Bowden

Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena ... But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas. — Carl Von Clausewitz

The most important thing we can tell young people is not to be an imitation of somebody else. That their life is special. They are the creator of their life and their way and find something that they enjoy doing that doesn't even feel like work. It feels like a passion. And then just by doing that and bringing that to the world, they become architects of change. — Maria Shriver

The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring. — Alain De Botton

For five years the refugees of Eastern Europe had been pouring into Austria through every fast-closing gap in the barbed wire: crashing frontiers in stolen cars and lorries, across minefields, clinging to the underneath of trains, to be corralled and questioned and decided over in their thousands, while they played chess on wooden packing cases and showed each other photographs of people they would never see again. They came from Hungary and Romania and Poland and Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and sometimes Russia, and they hoped they were on their way to Canada and Australia and Palestine. They had travelled by devious routes and often for devious reasons. They were doctors and scientists and bricklayers. They were truck drivers, thieves, acrobats, publishers, rapists and architects. — Adam Sisman

Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as salon art. Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. — Walter Gropius

Justin looks familiar because he's an architect."
As far as an explanation goes, that one is pretty terrible. "Yes. And we all know each other through The Gay Architects Association. I forgot. Were you at the potluck last month?"
"Yup. I brought the pasta salad," Justin answers, without missing a beat.
Avery salutes him with his beer bottle. "It was really good. I liked the bacon."
"It was real too. Only straight architects put bacon bits in their pasta salad." Justin smiles. "I'm in it for the real meat."
"Aren't we all?" Avery laughs and clinks his beer bottle with Justin's.
"Oh, this was a good idea," Brandon says and sighs. "Introducing you two. — Avon Gale

We create our own government. We are responsible for its beauty and for its ugliness. We are responsible for its glories and for its failures and, most important, we are responsible for amending those failures no matter who are their most immediate architects. — Charlie Pierce

Yet though Americans have been driving up to their houses for decades and entering through backdoors, side doors, kitchen doors, and especially doors through garages, architects keep designing houses with ceremonial front doors that are nowhere near any car or driveway. — Akiko Busch

Architects and engineers are among the most fortunate of men since they build their own monuments with public consent, public approval and often public money. — John Prebble

Some of the best work that's happening right now is from architects who have remained in their home countries and who have focused on a local or national identity and the idea of critical regionalism. — Cameron Sinclair

Doctors are crucial choice architects, and with an understanding of how Humans think, they could do far more to improve people's health and thus to lengthen their lives. — Richard H. Thaler

Despite their claims to a purely scientific and reasoned approach, the relationship of Modernist architects to their work remained at base a romantic one; they looked to architecture to support a way of life that appealed to them. Their domestic buildings were conceived as stage sets for actors in an idealised drama about contemporary existence. — Alain De Botton

Architects in planning rooms today have forgotten their faith in natural light. Depending on the touch of a finger to a switch, they are satisfied with static light and forget the endlessly changing qualities of natural light, in which a room is a different room every second of the day. — Louis Kahn

Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease. — R. Buckminster Fuller

There were many generations of Latino people coming to this country, coming from difficult political or social situations in their own countries, and they worked very hard to have their kids go to universities. Well, those kids came out and they are now doctors and architects, or they are on the Supreme Court. That has a reflection in Hollywood. So, we are actually very proud that our characters are Latinos, and I think it's good for diversity and cultural interaction. — Antonio Banderas

I suspect few housing projects in the US were designed by architects who expected to live in them. You see the same thing in programming languages. C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for their own designers to use. Cobol, Ada, and Javawere created for other people to use. If you think you're designing
something for idiots, odds are you're not designing something good, even for idiots. — Paul Graham

I heard a story once in the Orient about two architects who went to see the Buddha. They had run out of money on their projects and hoped the Buddha could do something about it. 'Well, I'll do what I can,' said the Buddha, and he went off to see their work. The first architect was building a bridge, and the Buddha was very impressed. 'That's a very good bridge,' he said, and he began to pray. Suddenly a great white bull appeared, carrying on its back enough gold to finish construction. 'Take it,' said the Buddha, 'and build even more bridges.' And so the first architect went away very happy. The second architect was building a wall, and when the Buddha saw it he was equally impressed. 'That's a very good wall,' he said solemnly, and began to pray. Suddenly the sacred bull appeared, walked over to the second architect, and sat on him. — Colin Higgins

I don't know any architects that I respect who don't have their own voice. I think the difference between architecture and the other arts is your immersion in reality. — Thom Mayne

The tall building, concentrating man in one place more densely than ever before, similarly concentrates the dilemma of our public architecture at the end of the twentieth century: whether the new forms made possible by technology are doomed by the low calculations of modern patrons and their architects. — Martin Filler

The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events. — Arthur Erickson

Experimental architecture by its very nature is more prone to the depredations of time and natural elements than buildings made from conventional materials through traditional methods. Avant-garde architects often simply do not know how the products of their imagination will perform when implemented, especially if untested components are involved. — Martin Filler

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught - nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience! — Herman Melville

The first is that seemingly small features of social situations can have massive effects on people's behavior; nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them. Choice architecture, both good and bad, is pervasive and unavoidable, and it greatly affects our decisions. The second claim is that libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron. Choice architects can preserve freedom of choice while also nudging people in directions that will improve their lives. — Richard H. Thaler

Martin explains that working with architects in the Arup SoundLab has led to improved collaborations: 'We can relate to architects much better. If we are brought on board at the ideal time, which is if we are brought on board at concept, we can sit with the architect and say...this is what you have to work with. They can hear and they can understand it. Then from their first ideas and concepts they are much more willing to work with us when we talk to them about shape and form. — Yanni Alexander Loukissas

In Tom's River, an hour away from Vineland, there's also a large tent city. Increasingly pessimistic, most of us don't dream of any bright future, but are planning for the worst. How many of us are squatting in foreclosed homes? How many are scraping by on just a fraction of what we used to earn just a few years ago? How many are quickly exhausting their scant savings? How many will be fired next week? Meanwhile, this criminal government continues its systematic impoverishment and suppression of us all. Fragmented and confused, we have no plan to combat any of this, but are looking to be saved by the very architects of our ruination. — Linh Dinh

Where do architects and designers get their ideas? The answer, of course, is mainly from other architects and designers, so is it mere casuistry to distinguish between tradition and plagiarism? — Nancy Banks-Smith