But the building's identity resided in the ornament.
Louis SullivanRead
Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Every building has its own unique character, much like a person.
This quote by Louis Sullivan emphasizes the individuality of each building, suggesting that just as every person is unique and cannot be replicated, so too is every architectural structure. It speaks to the idea that buildings carry their own stories, identities, and aesthetics that set them apart from one another.
Themes
ArchitectureBuildingsUniquenessDesignIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about architectural design, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of individuality in buildings.
More from Louis Sullivan
All quotes βWhat the people are within, the buildings express without.
Louis SullivanRead
Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant.
Louis SullivanRead
How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.
Louis SullivanRead
The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time--- is he who shall create poems in stone.
Louis SullivanRead
It was the spirit animating the mass and flowing from it, and it expressed the individuality of the building.
Louis SullivanRead
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