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.
We try to make buildings last long and be resilient but also be not so idiosyncratic that they can't change.
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.
Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future.
The difference between a builder and an architect is that an architect also cares about desire, about dreams.
Architects mostly work for privileged people, people who have money and power. Power and money are invisible, so people hire us to visualize their power and money by making monumental architecture. I love to make monuments, too, but I thought perhaps we can use our experience and knowledge more for the general public, even for those who have lost their houses in natural disasters.
Why should we build very large spaces when they are not necessary? We can design halls spanning several kilometres and covering a whole city, but we have to ask, what does it really make? What does society really need?
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