Quotes on Architecture

Any work of architecture that has with it some discussion, some polemic, I think is good. It shows that people are interested, people are involved.

So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but-instead-exalting the simple laws of common sense-or of super-sense if you prefer-determining form by way of the nature of materials.

If you foolishly ignore beauty, then you will soon find yourself without it.

Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

One cannot make architecture without studying the condition of life in the city

What surprises me most in architecture, as in other techniques, is that a project has one life in its built state but another in its written or drawn state.

One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places. The city is the locus of the collective memory.

Architecture does not change anything. It's always on the side of the wealthy. The important thing is to believe that it can make life better.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

Today, architecture is invention. It isn't enough to just be rational - It must also be beautiful.

In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.

I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness.

To me, a building - if it's beautiful - is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.

If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession’s responsibilities.

I'm trying to discover - invent, I suppose - an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way. I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples.

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

I call architecture frozen music.

I like ruins because what remains is not the total design, but the clarity of thought, the naked structure, the spirit of the thing.

Architecture is a art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being.