Barragan Quotes

#1. My house is my refuge, an emotional piece of architecture, not a cold piece of convenience.

Luis Barragan

#2. Life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called human.

Luis Barragan

#3. A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy.

Luis Barragan

#4. Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.

Luis Barragan

#5. I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one.

Luis Barragan

#6. Architecture is a art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being.

Luis Barragan

#7. God is much more concerned about your character than your career, because you will take your character into eternity, but not your career.

Rick Warren

#8. Any work of architecture that does not express serenity is a mistake.

Luis Barragan

#9. I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.

George Washington

#10. In the creation of a garden, the architect invites the partnership of the Kingdom of Nature. In a beautiful garden the majesty of nature is ever present, but it is nature reduced to human proportions and thus transformed into the most efficient haven against the aggressiveness of contemporary life.

Luis Barragan

#11. I believe that architects should design gardens to be used, as much as the houses they build, to develop a sense of beauty and the taste and inclination toward the fine arts and other spiritual values.

Luis Barragan

#12. A creative project is a moving target. You never end up where you start.

Evangeline Lilly

#13. Don't ask me about this building or that one, don't look at what I do, see what I see.

Luis Barragan

#14. It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point.

George Eliot

#15. All architecture, which does not express serenity, fails in its spiritual mission. Thus, it has been a mistake to abandon the shelter of walls for the inclemency of large areas of glass.

Luis Barragan

#16. I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.

Luis Barragan

#17. Beauty is the oracle that speaks to us all.

Luis Barragan

#18. It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis.

Luis Barragan

#19. In the theater there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time - in the cinema, only one.

Orson Welles

#20. 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