“All architecture is great architecture after sunset perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
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.
“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.”
“All architecture is great architecture after sunset perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
“I don't see that any buildings should be excluded from the term architecture, as long as they are done properly.”
“The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.”
“A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.”
“I would have liked maybe to be in architecture or painting, something connected to the fine arts.”
“We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.”
“I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.”
“I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness.”
“Georgian architecture respected the scale of both the individual and the community.”
“Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.”
“Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns.”
“Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”
“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”
“The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person and in the end they unite.”
“Today's developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise.”