Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.
Frank GehryRead
I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the irony of clients dictating terms to architects whom they hire for their expertise.
Frank Gehry's quote addresses the strange phenomenon where clients, despite hiring architects for their creativity and expertise, impose their own ideas and constraints on the design process. This can undermine the architect's vision and diminish the potential for innovative and original designs, emphasizing the importance of trust and collaboration in the client-architect relationship.
In practice
In an architecture presentation discussing the need for client trust.
Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.
Your best work is your expression of yourself.
My only extravagance in life is my sailboat. I'm bonkers about that, but other than that, I don't spend money on myself.
For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.
Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.
An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that.
Most of the wonderful places in the world were not made by architects but by the people.
My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we - architects - can effect the quality of life of the people.
If you look at the Earth without architecture, its sometimes a little bit unpleasant. So there is this basic human need to do shelter in the broadest sense of the word, whether its a movie theater or a simple log cabin in the mountains. This is the core of architecture: To provide a space for human beings.
We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
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?
All buildings, large or small, public or private, have a public face, a facade; they therefore, without exception, have a positive or negative effect on the quality of the public realm, enriching or impoverishing it in a lasting and radical manner. The architecture of the city and public space is a matter of common concern to the same degree as laws and language—they are the foundation of civility and civilisation.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.