There is a danger when every building has to look spectacular; to look like it is changing the world. I don't care how a building looks if it means something, not to architects, but to the people who use it.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of a building's functionality and meaning to its occupants over its aesthetic appeal.
David Chipperfield's quote highlights the potential pitfalls of prioritizing architectural aesthetics to an extreme degree, suggesting that a building should serve a purpose and resonate with its users rather than merely striving for visual grandeur. He makes a case for designs that are meaningful and functional to the everyday lives of people, rather than catering solely to the spectacle expected by architects or the industry.
In practice
This quote would be ideal for a discussion on sustainable architecture at a conference.
I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would really like one. Making sure a shaving mirror in a hotel bathroom is at the right angle. Making bureaucratic buildings that are somehow cheerful.
People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.
We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future.
Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.
A greater focus on design in all new homes would make the best use of land, create homes and public spaces, and reinforce the structures of urban life.
Modern buildings of our time are so huge that one must group them. Often the space between these buildings is as important as the buildings themselves.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.