Paul Goldberger Quotes

#1. We identify New York with the great bridges and tunnels and roadways and subway system and so forth.

Paul Goldberger

#2. I think of what the experience is of going into the building, of spending time in it, and try to get a sense of what the building would be like to work in as well.

Paul Goldberger

#3. Buildings don't exist to be pinned, like brooches, on the front of bigger structures to which they bear only the most distant of relationships.

Paul Goldberger

#4. For most of the nineteen-seventies, the official route map of the New York City subway system was a beautiful thing.

Paul Goldberger

#5. On New York subways in the 1980s: Riding on the IRT is usually a matter of serving time in one of the city's most squalid environments-noisy, smelly, crowded and overrun with a ceaseless supply of graffiti.

Paul Goldberger

#6. Architecture begins to matter when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.

Paul Goldberger

#7. Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Atlanta: those are all cities that really didn't get big, didn't hit their stride until the 20th century.

Paul Goldberger

#8. New York grew up before the automobile. And even though it's full of cars, its shape and form didn't get created around the automobile.

Paul Goldberger

#9. I try to do everything from thinking about big issues like how a building fits into the larger stream of architectural history to practical issues such as how it feels to navigate your way through its interior.

Paul Goldberger

#10. Infrastructure creates the form of a city and enables life to go on in a city, in a certain way.

Paul Goldberger

#11. I don't usually go in for reviews of buildings that aren't yet built, since you can tell only so much from drawings and plans, and, besides, has there ever been a building that didn't look great as a model?

Paul Goldberger

#12. It fills one with a sense of architectural possibility.

Paul Goldberger

#13. It seems to me that the sad event of 9/11 has created a huge opportunity for the revitalization of lower Manhattan - new world class contemporary buildings, more open space and pedestrian connections, more sustainability, more culture and the rejuvenation of New York on the world stage again.

Paul Goldberger

#14. Integrity has been enhanced.

Paul Goldberger

#15. By any reasonable standard, Riverside Drive would be considered the best street in New York. Where else, after all, are there such views-not of a narrow river, as there is across town, but of one of the noblest rivers in the United States.

Paul Goldberger

#16. Right after 9/11 it looked as if the idea of a huge skyscraper might be considered obsolete. It came back, but I think that's more closely connected to the rise of Asian and Middle Eastern cities in the world economy (Dubai, Shanghai, Taipei, etc.) than anything else.

Paul Goldberger

#17. Wright's building made it socially and culturally acceptable for an architect to design a highly expressive, intensely personal museum. In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim.

Paul Goldberger

#18. The bias among architecture critics isn't against skyscrapers per se, but against the way in which their design is so heavily dictated by economic considerations - the way in which skyscrapers are real estate before they are architecture.

Paul Goldberger

#19. A noble space, unlike any other of our time, for it is both strong and delicate. It seems to call at once for a Boeing 747 and for a string quartet.

Paul Goldberger

#20. The taste of people with large bank accounts tends not to be on the cutting edge.

Paul Goldberger