Top 100 Architectural Quotes
#1. Sometimes the things that destroy you, become the architectural blueprints which make your mind royal.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
#2. 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
#3. Equilibrium is the state of death, only chaos produces life
The Ancient Greeks have been driven to extinction by too much search for architectural harmony.
Stephane Lupasco
#4. Perhaps I occasionally sought to give, or inadvertently gave, to the student a sense of battle on the intellectual battlefield. If all you do is to give them a faultless and complete and uninhabited architectural masterpiece, then you do not help them to become builders of their own.
Carl-Gustaf Rossby
#5. Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture.
Rem Koolhaas
#6. For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.
James Rouse
#7. Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.
Walter Benjamin
#8. I was a very interested arts student, I was always into that part of school and when I got into high school I went into architectural drafting. It gave me an understanding of how to build things and it's really helped me put things in perspective. With my music and my movies, to me it's all art.
Ice Cube
#9. Google's architectural model around broadband and services and so forth plays very well to the powerful devices and services Apple is doing. We're a perfect back end to the problems that they're trying to solve.
Eric Schmidt
#10. Holiness is the architectural plan upon which God buildeth up His living temple.
Charles Spurgeon
#11. The decorator of Las Colimas must have been a great admirer of both early Aztec and late Taco Bell architectural styles.
Ilona Andrews
#12. I go to the studio every day, but I don't paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things.
Gerhard Richter
#14. Romania was an original mix: a population that looked Italian but wore the expressions of Russian peasants; an architectural backdrop that often evoked France and Central Europe; and service and physical conditions that resembled those in Africa.
Robert D. Kaplan
#15. In alarming proportions the following words have disappeared from architectural publications: beauty, inspiration, magic, sorcery, enchantment, and also serenity, mystery, silence, privacy, astonishment. All of these have found a loving home in my soul.
Luis Barragan
#16. From the outside, it looked like it was crouching, like it knew it was an architectural outcast.
Anonymous
#17. Unlike the past decades, the present moment is lacking in architectural discourse.
Lebbeus Woods
#18. As regards my own 'philosophy,' I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals - such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge.
Martin Rees
#19. Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times.
Jaquelin T. Robertson
#20. My mother knew if you bought a couple of really good architectural outfits and put your money into accessories, you could create a million different looks. She taught that to me, which I think was invaluable.
Iris Apfel
#21. Because he knew that he was coming for the last time. That morning he had been expelled from the Architectural School of the Stanton Institute of Technology.
Ayn Rand
#22. Architectural features of true democratic ground-freedom would rise naturally from topography, which means that buildings would all take on the nature and character of the ground on which in endless variety they would stand and be component part.
Frank Lloyd Wright
#23. If you get hold of a head of hair on somebody you've never seen before, cut beautiful shapes, cut beautiful architectural angles and she walks out looking so different - I think that's masterful.
Vidal Sassoon
#24. Fragmentation is like classful addressing
an interesting early architectural error that shows how much experimentation was going on while IP was being designed.
Paul Vixie
#25. The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut, worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the place of the acanthus in architectural ornament, and throwing their pale green fruit into delicate contrast.
Isabella Bird
#26. In another life I would love to be a cosmetic surgeon because it's architectural. You know, you are trying to figure out where the seams go. Can I do it in one piece like Halston? Can you formaldehyde DNA?
Tom Ford
#27. I've built a tree house; because of my architectural training, it's heavily over-designed, with an oriel window sticking out of it and flying foxes coming off it.
Greg Wise
#29. I look upon myself as a musical bricklayer with architectural aspirations.
Robert Mayer
#30. We lived in a housing project graced by the architectural style of Early Chicken Coop ...
Clara Fraser
#31. An impersonal force might be leading you to a wilderness of perfect flatness or a peak of perfect height. But only a personal God can possibly be leading you (if, indeed, you are being led) to a city with just streets and architectural proportions,
G.K. Chesterton
#32. In Britain, we've tended to replace the kind of architectural culture valued in much of Europe with an in-flight magazine lifestyle - all branding, marketing and 'accessibility', a word that usually means dumbing-down.
David Chipperfield
#33. I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something.
Neil Gaiman
#34. This information is not too difficult to follow, provided that the reader takes an interest in, and has no distaste, for the minutiae of Greek architectural detail...
Rhys Carpenter
#35. My architectural drive was to design new types of buildings to help poor people, especially following natural disasters and catastrophes ... I will use whatever time is left to me to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to help humanity.
Frei Otto
#36. I used to love to draw. I didn't want to go to art class because I felt that would be too corny when I was young, but architectural drafting was the cool thing to do because there was more precision. It taught me a lot about building and structures and doorways and frames and windowsills.
Ice Cube
#37. I think the general public's response to my projects is very strong. You can be an intellectual and say that popularity detracts from architectural quality. On the other hand, you can see in the public's identification something very positive.
Moshe Safdie
#38. The notion of buildings that speak helps us to place at the very centre of our architectural conundrums the question of the values we want to live by - rather than merely of how we want things to look.
Alain De Botton
#39. God designed u to fit an architectural edifice. Discover your real self
Ikechukwu Joseph
#40. The ultimate pleasure of architecture lies in the most forbidden parts of the architectural act, where limits are perverted and prohibitions are transgressed.
Bernard Tschumi
#41. People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok.
Zaha Hadid
#42. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft.
Tobsha Learner
#43. I think in space or music or art or literature of any kind there has to be some kind of void where the viewer or the spectator or the listener or the reader can insert themselves into it, and there is a certain kind of architectural space which is totalitarian, which does not allow you to do that.
Jonathan Meades
#44. As architects we're trained to solve problems, but I don't really believe in architectural problems. I only believe in opportunities.
Magnus Larsson
#45. It's language as a kind of structural system. A diagram of a sentence, now that seems like a kind of architectural model. I don't know how to explain it, but it would be nice to try. Why, why this fascination?
Vito Acconci
#46. Although there are countless tangents that a career in the building arts can take, it is nonetheless most unusual for a major architectural practice to emerge once a firm's principals are well into what is loosely called middle age.
Martin Filler
#47. The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services.
Vinton Cerf
#48. 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
#49. The British government - any government - is potentially the worst [architectural] client in the world.
Thomas Heatherwick
#50. The first principle of architectural beauty is that the essential lines of a construction be determined by a perfect appropriateness to its use.
Gustave Eiffel
#51. Architectural and product designs have a narrative capacity - you can start to tell a story about them and imagine a lot of things.
Michael Graves
#52. Potassium cyanide," says the talent wrangler as she leans over to pick up a paper napkin off the floor. "Found naturally in the cassava or manioc roots native to Africa, used to tint architectural blueprints in the form of the deep-blue pigment known as Prussian blue. Hence the shade 'cyan' blue.
Chuck Palahniuk
#53. We depend on computers when we ourselves haven't mastered the principles behind what we are asking computers to design.
Glenn Murcutt - A Singular Architectural Practice page 16
Glenn Murcutt
#54. In some cases there are ways of thinking about what an architectural program produces - interior and exterior - that is not necessarily directed by an economic requirement, but is a diagram based on human actions, selfish or otherwise.
Jimenez Lai
#55. much since the labor was free. It's not going to win any architectural
Ray Gorham
#56. Architectural photography can involve a lot of waiting; the building becomes a kind of sundial, while you wait for a shadow to crawl away from a detail you want, or for the mass and balance of the structure to reveal itself in a certain way.
William Gibson
#57. The tragic side of many architectural enterprises is that they destroy natural beauties which are a priceless possession and cannot be replaced.
Helen Keller
#58. It fills one with a sense of architectural possibility.
Paul Goldberger
#59. Interior design is a travesty of the architectural process and a frightening condemnation of the credulity, helplessness and gullibility of the most formidable consumers - the rich.
Stephen Bayley
#60. Back when I was a professional model-maker at Industrial Light & Magic, my specialty was hard-edged construction - spaceships, miniature sets, and architectural stuff. These objects were sometimes just 12 inches across yet needed enough detail to fill a movie screen.
Adam Savage
#61. It is usually a mistake to impose an individual's taste on a room that has its own ... style. Conversely, to put very fine pieces of furniture in a room that is without architectural distinction is as absurd as wearing a tiara with a bathing suit.
Nancy Lancaster
#62. I wanted to work in the arts. My dream come true would be to be an architectural historian and work with the royal palaces and all the fabulous art collections. But I'm not committed enough.
Jaye Davidson
#63. There is no sadder tale in the annals of architecture than the virtual disappearance of the defining architectural form of the Modern Movement - publicly sponsored housing.
Martin Filler
#64. Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.
Ada Louise Huxtable
#65. I agonize over things like this - the order of things, section titles, all this architectural sort of stuff. Takes me years to figure out.
Peter Orner
#66. Writing is a totally different brain than directing, at least for me. With writing, you're trying your best to foresee all the problems before they happen. It's more architectural in a weird way.
Craig Zobel
#67. I aim to create furniture that appears in a room as buildings on a skyline and reminds the viewer of the interaction between objects of design and architectural space.
Gae Aulenti
#68. Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.
Arthur Erickson
#69. I hope that America as a whole, and especially its architects, will become more seriously involved in producing a new architectural culture that would bring the nation to the apex - where it has stood before - and lead the world.
Tadao Ando
#70. The time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction.
John Ruskin
#71. I'd say that my profession ends where architectural thinking ends - architectural thinking in terms of thinking about programs and organizational structure. These abstractions play a role in many other disciplines, and those disciplines are now defining their 'architectures' as well.
Rem Koolhaas
#72. Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers's Centre Georges Pompidou of 1971-1977 - the true prototype of the modern museum as popular architectural spectacle - wound up costing so much more than planned that the French government solved the shortfall by cutting support for several regional museums.
Martin Filler
#73. Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea.
Amy Poehler
#74. Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.
Philip Johnson
#75. A bold architectural statement turns a public building into a landmark, but it is in the details where the architect becomes the real storyteller.
Curtis W. Fentress
#76. I like architectural shapes. You can't put any shape on any body, except on the runway. In reality, it has to look and feel flattering.
Bibhu Mohapatra
#77. [On Addis Ababa:] Among the city's handicaps are an immaturity for which no one can be blamed, as it was founded only eighty years ago, and a proliferation of architectural excesses for which many people can and should be blamed.
Dervla Murphy
#78. I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.
Ian McEwan
#79. I love cloisters, which are the architectural equivalent of a theological concept: perfect freedom within set boundaries.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
#80. Architecture and architectural freedom are above all a social issue that must be seen from inside a political structure, not from outside it,
Lina Bo Bardi
#81. Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around it s Outer Walls.
Mervyn Peake
#82. They couldn't wait to get me out. My dad found my place, my mom helped me pack, and my brother was making architectural plans for my bedroom. It was just what you do at 18.
Justine Bateman
#83. Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
Henry Ward Beecher
#84. The task of the architectural project is to reveal, through the transformation of form, the essence of the surrounding context.
Vittorio Gregotti
#85. I wear the same black suit. I have five of them. I pair them with a red scarf. I was wearing a red scarf when I won the first architectural competition of my career.
Bernard Tschumi
#87. My furniture is an exercise in architecture or architectural mood.
Ettore Sottsass
#88. Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families.
Hernan Cortes
#89. The challenge of a cathedral is very good for architectural inventiveness.
Oscar Niemeyer
#90. We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using actual geometry, actual architectural shapes and bone structure. The cut had to be perfect and layered beautifully, so that when a woman shook it, it just fell back in.
Vidal Sassoon
#91. The greatest architectural illusion is not Baroque fancy or Victorian flamboyant, but minimalism.
Kevin McCloud
#92. What I learned from architectural drafting is that everything has to have a plan to work. You just can't wing it. I can't get all the materials I need for a house and just start building. Whether it's a career, family, life - you have to plan it out.
Ice Cube
#93. The center of Western culture is Greece, and we have never lost our ties with the architectural concepts of that ancient civilization.
Stephen Gardiner
#94. Then, the stunningly white cubes that make up the Getty Museum. It's an architectural masterpiece funded by a venal billionaire's trust, housing third-rate art. Pure L.A.: might makes right and packaging is all. Traffic
Jonathan Kellerman
#95. Likewise 'radical'. I'm only radical because the architectural profession has got lost. Architects are such a dull lot - and they're so convinced that they matter.
Cedric Price
#96. The logic behind using stone for the facing of the Empire State building seemed irrefutable, the choice of Bedford limestone inarguable. - architectural historian John Tauranac
Douglas Wissing
#97. It was always my intention that The Frieze should be housed in a room which would provide a suitable architectural frame for it.
Edvard Munch
#98. Supply and demand regulate architectural form.
Adolf Loos
#99. The centuries-old history and culture of India, majestic architectural monuments and museums of Delhi, Agra and Mumbai have a unique attractive force.
Vladimir Putin
#100. A software architecture is defined by a configuration of architectural elements
components, connectors, and data
constrained in their relationships in order to achieve a desired set of architectural properties.
Anonymous
