Though I love the arts with all my heart - paintings, sculpture, theatre, and music - and think they are among the biggest achievements we humans can do, I am really convinced that architecture is among the most important.
Interpretation
Architecture is a vital art form that significantly impacts human life.
In this quote, Santiago Calatrava expresses his deep appreciation for the arts, noting their importance in human achievement. However, he uniquely elevates architecture above other art forms, suggesting that it plays a critical role not only in aesthetic experience but also in shaping the environment and everyday life, emphasizing its foundational significance in society.
In practice
During a speech about urban development, this quote can highlight the essential role architecture plays in our cities.
Building a bridge, in my opinion, is a symbolic gesture, linked with the needs of people who cross over it, and with the idea of overcoming or surmounting obstacles. A modern bridge can also be a work of art. It helps to shape our daily lives and becomes a vital experience for all the people who use it.
There is one way that architecture is superior to sculpture, and that is scale. You can walk into a building and have it all around you.
I paint and work as a sculptor, and I see architecture as an art... If you follow this approach you can use techniques to the service of man and to the service of an artistic idea, and beauty.
The architect works for so many years building it, and the moment you deliver it to the people is the moment when you are unnecessary.
When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.
Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalise cities both artistically and functionally.
It looks like the writer is telling you a story. What the writer is actually doing, however, is using words to evoke a series of micromemories from your own experience that inmix, join, and connect in your mind in an order the writer controls, so that, in effect, you have a sustained memory of something that never happened to you.
New Jersey is the most poetic state: close enough to New York to be urban and cosmopolitan, far enough to be desirous and unsure; densely populated, but full of farms and woods, with the most deer of any state.
I always say that music is a small drop in the ocean of life. I was told a long time ago that your horn, or whatever instrument you play, is a means to be in the world.
At the very least, noir offers an alternate reality - moments of real passion, a bleak code of honor, and a need for freedom amid corruption. At its best, noir offers a map of subversion.
If music is to continue to support the livelihoods of artists, it cannot be taken without the permission of artists.
Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think - how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness.
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