Modern Architecture Quotes - Page 2

• No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

  John Ruskin

  Simple, Architecture, Haughty

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.195, University of Virginia Press

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• But the building's identity resided in the ornament.

  Louis Sullivan

  Identity, Ornaments, Architecture

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• A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  Nature, Elements, Architecture

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• Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It's not your garden, it's not a park - it's a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer's plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness.

  Ben Aaronovitch

  Garden, Tree, Parks

  Ben Aaronovitch (2013). “Broken Homes”, p.144, Hachette UK

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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

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• 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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• 

  Architecture begins where engineering ends.

  Walter Gropius

  Engineering, Design, Architecture

  Speech at Harvard Department of Architecture. "Architects on Architecture". Book by Paul Heyer, 1966.

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• The modern architect is, generally speaking, art's greatest enemy.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Art, Badass, Bad Ass

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• Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.

  Arthur Erickson

  Badass, Moving, Heart

  Speech to McGill University School of Architecture, www.arthurerickson.com. October 21, 2000.

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• All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Sunset, Bad Ass

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• Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise.

  Adolf Loos

  Badass, Bad Ass, Men

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• When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature - this very unique to Japan.

  Tadao Ando

  Unique, Japan, Culture

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• It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.

  David Allan Coe

  Badass, Bad Ass, Foundation

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• A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Clouds, Sky, People

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• In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture.

  Nancy Banks-Smith

  Badass, Bad Ass, Doors

  Guardian 20 Feb. 1979

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• We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Future

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• Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.

  Ernest Dimnet

  Art, Badass, Bad Ass

  What We Live By (1932) pt. 2, ch. 12

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• Architects of grandeur are often the master builders of disillusionment.

  Bryant H. McGill

  Literature, Architecture, Masters

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• All architecture is great architecture after sunset.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sunset, Nocturnal, Architecture

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• 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.

  Ai Weiwei

  Badass, Bad Ass, Criticism

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• Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems we split the possibilities to make good building art.

  Alvar Aalto

  Art, Design, Splits

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• At this present time, matter is still the best way to think of architecture, but I'm not so sure for very long. The computer is radicalizing the way we think about our world.

  Ben Nicholson

  Thinking, Our World, Long

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• I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

  Ayn Rand

  Badass, Bad Ass, Order

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  Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

  Steve Martin

  Funny, Music, Dance

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• Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea.

  Yoshio Taniguchi

  Hope, Badass, Bad Ass

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