There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of practical and functional architecture over theoretical designs that lack substance.
Peter Zumthor's quote highlights the ongoing necessity for high-quality architecture that serves its purpose and positively impacts its environment. He distinguishes between 'good quality architecture' that is tangible and beneficial to people's lives, and 'paper architecture', which refers to theoretical designs that may look good on paper but fail to manifest in reality or fulfill their intended roles.
In practice
In a presentation about urban development, you might cite this quote to emphasize the importance of functional buildings.
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.
In order to design buildings with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction.
I think the chance of finding beauty is higher if you don't work on it directly. Beauty in architecture is driven by practicality. This is what you learn from studying the old townscapes of the Swiss farmers.
Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It's about intensive research, really. The concentration is warm and intimate and like the fire inside the earth - intense but not distorted. You can go to a place, really feel it in your heart. It's actually a beautiful feeling.
Architecture to me is whole. I cannot say I only care about this 25% and the other 75% I let go... it's just I want to work the way I want to work. In my shop, you can order certain things and other things you cannot. They are not available.
I design for the use of a building and the place and for the people who use it... the reputation for arrogance comes because when work is offered to me, I look whether I can find a genuine interest in quality.
I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.
Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music
To keep beauty in its place is to make all things beautiful.
She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.
The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.
Directing has completely changed the way I write and watch films.
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