Louis Kahn

The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.

I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art.

Greek architecture taught me that the column is where the light is not, and the space between is where the light is. It is a matter of no-light, light, no-light, light. A column and a column brings light between them. To make a column which grows out of the wall and which makes its own rhythm of no-light, light, no-light, light: that is the marvel of the artist.

The room is the beginning of architecture.

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

We are born of light. The seasons are felt through light. We only know the world as it is evoked by light.

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and material as spent Light. What is made by Light casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space

A city is the place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.

Every building must have... its own soul.

The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.

I try to create homes, not houses.

The person of old had the same brilliance of mind that we assume we have now. But that which made a thing become manifest for the first time is our great moment of creative happening.