Architecture Today Quotes & Sayings

The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The equilibrium of society today depends upon it. Architecture has for its first duty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of the constituent elements of the house. — Le Corbusier

Today's developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise. — Arthur Erickson

As John Adams famously wrote during the American Revolution, "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." So maybe today they're writing apps rather than studying poetry, but that's an adjustment for the age. — Fareed Zakaria

Now, of course, architecture is a blind spot of our life in America today. How many millions of students go to the university to be educated? They come away conditioned, not enlightened, and they know nothing of architecture, although they have a department somewhere around
probably in the basement. — Frank Lloyd Wright

When we say that the ancestors of the Blacks, who today live mainly in Black Africa, were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, sciences in general, arts, religion, agriculture, social organization, medicine, writing, technique, architecture; that they were the first to erect buildings out of 6 million tons of stone (the Great Pyramid) as architects and engineers - not simply as unskilled laborers; that they built the immense temple of Karnak, that forest of columns with its famed hypostyle hall large enough to hold Notre-Dame and its towers; that they sculpted the first colossal statues (Colossi of Memnon, etc.) - when we say all that we are merely expressing the plain unvarnished truth that no one today can refute by arguments worthy of the name. — Cheikh Anta Diop

That's Manhattan today - all the money goes up top, while the infrastructure wastes away from neglect. The famous skyline is a cheap trick now, a sleight-of-hand to draw your eye from the truth, as illusory as a bodybuilder with osteoporosis. — Andrew Vachss

Like all these long low squat houses, it had been built not for but against. They were built against the forest, against the sea, against the elements, against the world. They had roof-beams and doors and hatred--as though in this part of the world an architect always included hatred among his tools, and said to his apprentice: 'Mind you've brought along enough hatred today. — Jane Gaskell

Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line, it is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work. What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before. — Ada Louise Huxtable

The English team's revisions showed that the Cambrian had been a time of unparalleled innovation and experimentation in body designs. For almost four billion years life had dawdled along without any detectable ambitions in the direction of complexity, and then suddenly, in the space of just five or ten million years, it had created all the basic body designs still in use today. Name a creature, from a nematode worm to Cameron Diaz, and they all use architecture first created in the Cambrian party. — Bill Bryson

And when an architect has designed a house with large windows, which is a necessity today in order to pull the daylight into these very deep houses, then curtains come to play a big role in architecture. — Arne Jacobsen

Indeed, "brute force" solutions are often characteristic of advanced cultures, not primitive ones. The Romans and their predecessors spent a long time figuring out how to build arches ... and virtually all our buildings today use post-and-lintel construction, precisely what the arch was devised to replace. We have better materials and more money, and given that, arches are usually not worth the extra complexity. — Henry Spencer

Let us today seek to find that place within each of us where dreams are made, where our highest aspirations take shape. Let us confirm the power of our humanity by giving architecture and substance to the dreams we have for our nation, so that the promised land of social and economic justice that is within our dreams will soon be within our sight. — Dennis Kucinich

It is insufficient for architecture today to directly implement an existing building typology; it instead requires architects to carefully examine the whole area with new interventions and programmatic typologies — Zaha Hadid

Today, architecture is invention. It isn't enough to just be rational - It must also be beautiful. — Oscar Niemeyer

Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. — Frank Lloyd Wright

All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures. Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark. — Rem Koolhaas

Church growth experts tell us that most people seeking a new church care little about its doctrines. They're mostly interested in the facilities of the church, its nursery, and opportunities for friendship. . . .The experts tell us that today's church members will switch churches at a moment's notice if they think that their personal and relational needs will be better met elsewhere--even if the doctrine taught is at best, suspect. Thus some will opt for better facilities and architecture even at the expense of jeopardizing their own soul. — Erwin W. Lutzer

Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings, and I think of where I stand when I design my architecture. — Tadao Ando

I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That's impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more. — Thom Mayne

Today's enterprise IT architecture is about integrating systems to meet business needs. Consequently, IT architects can't - and don't - live in a vacuum. To address that reality, Catalyst Conference 2006 will delve into strategic infrastructure technologies with the depth to which our clients have grown accustomed. With the larger number of Cross-Cutting Concerns sessions, we'll also clearly illustrate how these technologies relate to each other, and how roles, geographies, and business processes intersect within an enterprise. — Jamie Lewis

Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future. — Kenzo Tange

How much more mysterious and inviting is the street of an old town with its altering realms of darkness and light than are the brightly and evenly lit streets of today! The imagination and daydreaming are stimulated by dim light and shadow. In order to think clearly, the sharpness of vision, has to be suppressed, for thoughts travel with an absent-minded and unfocused gaze. Homogeneous bright light paralyses the imagination in the same way that homogenization of space weakens the experience of being, and wipes away the sense of place. The human eye is most perfectly turned for twilight rather than bright daylight. — Juhani Pallasmaa

Of all the lessons most relevant to architecture today, Japanese flexibility is the greatest. — Stephen Gardiner

For America today organic architecture interprets (will eventually build) this local embodiment of human freedom. This natural architecture seeks spaciousness, grace and openness; lightness and strength so completely balanced and logical that it is a new integrity ... — Frank Lloyd Wright

What is needed most in architecture today is the very thing that is most needed in life- Integrity. Just as it is in a human being, so integrity is the deepest quality in a building ... if we succeed, we will have done a great service to our moral nature- the psyche- of our democratic society ... Stand up for integrity in your building and you stand for integrity not only in the life of those who did the building but socially a reciprocal relationship is inevitable. — Frank Lloyd Wright

It is hard not to see into the future, faced with today's blind architecture - a thousand times more stupid and more revolting than that of other ages. How bored we shall be inside! — Andre Breton

Today is just the beginning of Kepler. Because of its super energy-efficient architecture, we will extend GPUs into datacenters, to super thin notebooks, to superphones. — Jen-Hsun Huang

Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral. — Hugo Chavez

It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution. — Le Corbusier

I'm afraid what we are building today will not have the same impact and sustainability of the architecture of a 100, 500 or 1,000 years ago. The buildings of those days were miracles. We don't perform such miracles today. So we should be a little more modest. For my part, I'll be glad to show one of my buildings one day to my grandchildren and say: I'm proud of that. — Zhang Xin

A thousand years from now" Leonidas declared, "two thousand, three thousand years hence, men a hundred generations yet unborn may, for their private purposes, make journey to our country. They will come, scholars perhaps or travelers from beyond the sea, prompted by curiosity regarding the past or appetite for knowledge of the ancients. They will peer out across our plain and probe among the stone and rubble of our nation. What will they learn about us? Their shovels will unearth neither brilliant palaces nor temples. Their picks will prize forth no everlasting architecture or art. What will remain of the Spartans? Not monuments of marble or bronze, but this- what we do here today." Out beyond the narrows, the enemy trumpets sounded. — Steven Pressfield

The bungalow had more to do with how Americans live today than any other building that has gone remotely by the name of architecture in our history. — Russell Lynes

I'd rather any kind of business on the ground floor than the utter lack of respect for pedestrians with which buildings are put up in this city today. . . . Nobody cares any more about pedestrian identity. — Claudia Pineiro

Integrating the beauty of seasonal change into the residence was a concept that remains true even today even in the more cramped, inner city machiya. — Judith Clancy

My interest has always been in an architecture which reflects the modernity of our epoch as opposed to the rethinking of historical references. My work deals with what is happening now - our techniques and materials, what we are capable of doing today. — Jean Nouvel

Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only this architecture creates. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

The modest analytic tool of simulation is not by itself a sufficient tool for these larger questions. This does nothing to demote the essential work of designers and engineers focused intently and rigorously on questions of energy through simulation. This remains very important work, but today it demands a more comprehensive and extensive context that amplifies the architecture and energy systems with equal purpose and rigor. — Kiel Moe

It is today an accepted principle of golfing architecture that the tiger should be teased and trapped and tested, while the rabbit should be left to peace, since he can make his own hell for himself. — Bernard Darwin