Quotes & Sayings About Modernist Architecture

Modernist architecture and town planning is inimical to human beings ... based on the Darwinian concept that evolution is open ended, that there must always be something new and better. — Leon Krier

Downtown Toronto is a very good place to talk about the neutrality of modernist architecture. I'm sure this kind of box-building was interesting in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties, but I think it's absolutely ridiculous to build like this in 2013. — Stefan Sagmeister

Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism, I use architecture to reconcile the two. — Tadao Ando

I was inspired by the androgyny of Yohji Yamanoto's designs to translate the clothing's dualities onto screen and image. I was playing with a multitude of influences for the S/S 2012 campaign, inspired by the modernist literature and architecture that is in itself a fusion of political and architectural mantras, both dreamy and concrete. — Collier Schorr

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

By 1970, the first stirrings of the revolt against Modernist orthodoxy in architecture had been felt, although it would be several years more until Postmodernism was widely accepted and made classical motifs permissible in high-style building design for the first time in decades. — Martin Filler

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

These comments recall Turkle's distinction between two kinds of "transparency" in technological cultures. Modernist transparency is the notion that users can and should have access to the inner workings of a technology. It evokes the aesthetic of early relationships with cars in which one could "open the hood and see inside." Turkle contrasts this with an opposing, post-modern meaning of the term - the notion that something is transparent if you can use it without knowing how it works. Post-modern transparency allows the user to navigate the surface of a system without ever having to access its underlying mechanics. Are young engineers more susceptible to post-modern ways of seeing simulation? — Yanni Alexander Loukissas

There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure — Roger Scruton

In Jack Nasar's research on American's taste in homes, only one group preferred the modernist house: architects. — Winifred Gallagher