Architectural Design Quotes

• Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.

  Frank Gehry

  Badass, Bad Ass, Talking

  "Home". Book by Kim Johnson Gross, Jeff Stone, and Julie V. Iovine, p. 43, 1993.

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• Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

  Philip Johnson

  Funny, Art, Badass

  New York Times 27 Dec. 1964, p. 9E

  71 Copy quote

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• The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Witty, Badass, Mistake

  The New York Times Magazine, October 04, 1953.

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• Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Spiritual, Design, Misunderstood

  341 Copy quote

• Good ideas come from everywhere. It's more important to recognize a good idea than to author it.

  Jeanne Gang

  Wisdom, Ideas, Design

  67 Copy quote

• Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

  Louis Kahn

  Design, Architecture, Reaching

  131 Copy quote

• A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

  Louis Kahn

  Mean, Architecture, Building

  "Secrets behind the world's great buildings" by Jonathan Glancey, www.cnn.com. October 26, 2016.

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• I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

  Philip Johnson

  Funny, Beach, Hate

  50 Copy quote

• 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.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Life, Mean, Men

  Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Kaufmann, Ben Raeburn (1960). “Frank Lloyd Wright: writings and buildings”

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• Always beware an unsigned architectural design.

  Martin Filler

  Design

  4 Copy quote

• All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.

  Tadao Ando

  Attachment, Design, Architecture

  "Talk Asia" with Anjali Rao, www.cnn.com. April 12, 2007.

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• The Japanese garden is a very important tool in Japanese architectural design because, not only is a garden traditionally included in any house design, the garden itself also reflects a deeper set of cultural meanings and traditions. Whereas the English garden seeks to make only an aesthetic impression, the Japanese garden is both aesthetic and reflective. The most basic element of any Japanese garden design comes from the realization that every detail has a significant value.

  E. J. W. Barber

  Art, Garden, House

  10 Copy quote

• Reading was only part of the thrill that a book represented. I got a dizzy pleasure from the weight and feel of a new book in my hand, a sensual delight from the smell and crispness of the pages. I loved the smoothness and bright colors of their jackets. For me, a stacked, unread pyramid of books was one of the sexiest architectural designs there was, because what I loved most about books was their promise, the anticipation of what lay between the covers, waiting to be found.

  Debra Ginsberg

  Book, Reading, Hands

  Debra Ginsberg (2006). “Blind Submission: A Novel”, p.4, Crown

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• Because it is a national landmark, there is only one way to judge the Kennedy Center - against the established standard of progressive and innovative excellence in architectural design that this country is known and admired for internationally. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Center not only does not achieve this standard of innovative excellence; it also did not seek it. The architect opted for something ambiguously called 'timelessness' and produced meaninglessness. It is to the Washington manner born. Too bad, since there is so much of it.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Country, Judging, Design

  Ada Louise Huxtable (2010). “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change”, p.81, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• My father was a master carpenter and builder. Architectural design, engineering design, mechanical design, three-dimensional views, that was my shtick, my forte.

  Bobby Seale

  Father, Views, Engineering

  14 Copy quote