Buildings shape how we live, work, and think. These quotes from architects, designers, and urban thinkers explore the relationship between structure and human experience — how the spaces we create end up creating us in return.
“Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.”
“In my early 20s I was so miserable doing construction, I wanted something that paid money. I liked nice stuff. I liked cars and architecture, and things that cost money. I wanted to not swing a hammer, and make money... and not do stuff that was dirty. I attempted to get into comedy. I started to do stand-up, but I wasn't very good at it.”
“Of all the lessons most relevant to architecture today, Japanese flexibility is the greatest.”
“Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science.”
“To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.”
“Japanese traditional architecture is created based on these conditions. This is the reason you have a very high degree of connection between the outside and inside in architecture.”
“I would have liked maybe to be in architecture or painting, something connected to the fine arts.”
“To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.”
“I left science, then I went into art, but I approach things very analytically. I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them.”
“It's my goal to make a building as immaterial as possible. Architecture is a very material thing. It takes a lot of resources, so why not eliminate what you don't need as long as you're able to achieve the same result?”
“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”
“The only job that was ever of interest to me other than filmmaking is architecture.”
“The Egyptian contribution to architecture was more concerned with remembering the dead than the living.”
“Every building is a prototype. No two are alike.”
“Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.”
“I don't see that any buildings should be excluded from the term architecture, as long as they are done properly.”