Architect Quotes

Garden as though you will live forever.

A garden is to be a world unto itself, it had better make room for the darker shades of feeling as well as the sunny ones.

All gardening is landscape painting.

Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.

Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

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.

I'm about four skyscrapers behind.

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

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

We are creating a unique experience. It's starts with how you see the building from a distance.

Transparency is not the same as looking straight through a building: it's not just a physical idea, it's also an intellectual one.

The architecture profession has lost a lot of its integrity, especially in the USA. The general architect here has no scruples, no ambitions.

The American attitude towards efficiency and execution should always underlie architecture.

Most architects say: I want to use this type of glass, even if it's too reflective or doesn't let enough light in. However, the use of a certain type of glass might change the comfort level.

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?

In Europe, they're more demanding, the ones that rent the build ings.

In Europe, architects consider themselves artists. They think they're special when they win a competition.

I've never looked at a suburban building as being a minor building and an urban building as being a major building.

I wanted to improve the suburban office building; to create a great urban space in a suburban environment with all that implies about interaction, collaboration and creativity.

I strive for an architecture from which nothing can be taken away.

German and English firms operate internationally, while French firms do not. The only place where they all have work is in China. Anybody can sell himself in China!

For me, though, the fun is over when I get the job.

For me, drawing generates thinking and vice versa.

Critics are entitled to have an opinion, but how can they judge how comfortable a building is? No critic is smart enough to judge how a building will perform over time.

Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.

Chinese buildings are like American buildings, with big footprints. People don't care about daylight or fresh air.