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Architects and Architecture Quotes and Quotations
 Architecture is a continuing dialogue between generations which creates an environment across time.  Why can't we have those curves and arches that express feeling in design? What is wrong with them? Why has everything got to be vertical, straight, unbending, only at right angles - and functional? You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe - when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that. To be an architect is to possess an individual voice speaking a generally understood language of form. In architecture the pride of man, his triumph over gravitation, his will to power, assume a visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms. The materials of city planning are sky, space, trees, steel and cement in that order and in that hierarchy. Buildings should be good neighbours. Pictures deface walls oftener than they decorate them. Life is rich, always changing, always challenging, and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood, concrete, glass and steel, of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space. A building is a string of events belonging together. Good architecture is like a piece of beautifully composed music crystallized in space that elevates our spirits beyond the limitation of time. - Tao Ho Architecture (is) a theatre stage setting where the leading actors are the people, and to dramatically direct the dialogue between these people and space is the technique of designing. I saw the bathroom fixtures as a kind of American Trinity. Perspective is worth 80 I.Q. points. - Alan Kay Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion. Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building. No architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect. Architecture is inhabited sculpture. The flowering of geometry. Society needs a good image of itself. That is the job of the architect. Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together. An arch never sleeps. Develop an infallible technique and then place yourself at the mercy of inspiration. The reality of the building does not consist in the roof and walls, but in the space within to be lived in. - Lao-Tzu Good architecture lets nature in. Architecture should be dedicated to keeping the outside out and the inside in. Early in life I had to choose between arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change. No house should ever be on a hill, or on anything. It should be of the hill. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other. How can we expect our students to become bold and fearless in thought and action if we encase them in sentimental shrines feigning a culture which has long since disappeared? The house does not frame the view: it projects the beholder into it. Architecture is space structured to serve man and to move him. Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly, but take every building to pieces, and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles. Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. In speculative buildings, which is most of our business, there are really only three chances to make architecture: the lobby or entrance sequence, the top and the elevator cab. A house is a machine for living. A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. The White House was designed by Hoban, a noted Irish-American architect, and I have no doubt that he believed by incorporating several features of the Dublin style he would make it more homelike for any President of Irish descent. It was a long wait, but I appreciate his efforts. Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system. We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. I call architecture 'petrified music'. - Goethe Form ever follows function. 
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