I hate holidays. If it is possible to build buildings, why sit on the beach?
Philip Johnsons
"Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be the original interpreter of his time, of his era, of his instant."
Frank Lloyd Wright
The beauty of being an architect is that you can walk in your dreams.
Harold Wagoner
If nature had been comfortable, humanity would never have invented architecture.
Oscar Wilde
Each material has a formal language that belongs to it and no material can claim forms that correspond to another material ... (read more)
Adolf Loos
"Architecture is the perennial struggle between man and nature, the struggle to overwhelm nature, to take possession of it. The first act of architecture is to place a stone on the ground. That act transforms a natural state of nature into a cultural state; it is a sacred act. "
Mario Botta
"Any architectural work that does not express serenity is a mistake"
Luis Barragán
We will still need a long time to know the exact shape of a table, a chair, a house
Henry Van De Valde
The city is a wonderful emotion of man. The city is an invention, indeed: it is the invention of man.
Renzo Piano
Architecture is the creation of volumes, and its purpose is not to cover but essentially to enclose space.
Peter Behrens
"The art of the decorator consists in doing in the houses of others what you would never dream of doing in your own"
Le Corbusier
"The work is not only the object, but also what surrounds it and the voids, the spaces."
Oscar Niemeyer
"Architecture is a fact of art, a phenomenon that arouses emotion, beyond construction problems, beyond them."
Le Corbusier
"Architecture is the adaptation of forms to opposing forces."
John Ruskin
"Modern architecture, abstractly stereometric, destroys all sensitivity for the structure and decomposition ... We have created nothingness around things."
Carlo Scarpa
Space, light, order. These are things that men need, like they need bread or a place to sleep.
Le Corbusier
"... Michel Angelo, Prencipe delli Architetti, said that those who follow others never go before them and I certainly would never have placed myself in this profession with the aim of being a copyist only ..."
Francesco Borromini
A house is not a car to live in. It is the shell of man, his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation.
Eileen Grey
The best way to predict the future is to plan.
Buckminster Fuller
Beauty is agreement and harmony between the parts in such a way that it is not possible to add, remove and change anything without compromising the whole.
Leon Battista Alberti
"Making architecture means building buildings for people, universities, museums, schools, concert halls: they are all places that become outposts against barbarism."
Renzo Piano
Space is the breath of art.
Frank Lloyd Wright
"Architect Siza, why did you design these houses here, at this point?"
Siza: "because it was the only place I was given".
Alvaro Siza
"There is a lot of work in this object", we use to say contemplating a well-finished object and believing that we understand the care and skill of the craftsman who created it. That our work really hides inside the things that succeed happily, is a thought that takes us to the limits of reflecting on the value of a work. Would our work really fit into things? Sometimes, when an architectural construction strikes me like a piece of music, a work of art or a painting, I am tempted to believe it.
Peter Zumthor
We do not want something straight or crooked, neither intelligent nor stupid, we do not want it either coarse or refined, we must know everything so that we can only take from the whole what is truly essential and important. In order to get as close as possible to what is right we must always be very scrupulous; nothing will be as enemy as superficiality, we will have to continually repeat to ourselves: if this is necessary, let it be little, but it is essential from every point of view.
Heinrich Tessenow
"I create an architectural order on the basis of geometry: squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. I try to use forces in the area where I am building, to restore the unity between the house and nature"
Tadao Ando
My architecture is made with the architect's tool, which is drawing and only drawing
Carlo Scarpa
The symmetry will be the better the more difficult it is to distinguish its axis
Heinrich Tessenow
"I've never really been interested in the right transparency. In fact, I've always been suspicious of it. The area where I feel most comfortable is the distance between translucent and opaque."
Steven Holl
Where technology is overcome, architecture begins
Mies van der Rohe
".... No matter how institutionally or technologically advanced society becomes, a house where nature can be felt represents the ideal environment for me to live in ......"
Tadao Ando
