Claes Oldenburg Quotes

An important work of architecture will create polemics.

The architect is not only the director, but he is the composer. And, as a composer, the architect brings a sense of creativity to each building.

To sum up the state of architecture in America: ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest of all the arts.

I am an architect at heart. I designed every home I've ever had, plus my studio.

Historically, in the world of architecture, enormous amounts of care and energy have been lavished on things that are almost a cliched idea of culture.

I take a keen interest in the architecture of places when I travel.

I am involved in the architecture of space.

Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me.

Personally, one of the greatest sources of inspiration for my work has been architecture. I've had the chance to see so many exquisite structures, whether they are historical monuments or modern commercial premises.

Architecture remains a passion and a subject I'm very interested in. I learned a great deal from studying it and working in it.

A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.

A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start.

Every spirit makes its house, but as afterwards the house confines the spirit, you had better build well.

You build a player like you build a house. You start with the foundations. The fundamentals.

Sculpture is an art of the open air... I would rather have a piece of my sculpture put in a landscape, almost any landscape, than in, or on, the most beautiful building I know.

Building is a sweet impoverishing.

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity.

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow.

Let's put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others.

Dancing and building are the two primary and essential arts. The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that expressthemselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite. Music, acting, poetry proceed in the one mighty stream; sculpture, painting, all the arts of design, in the other. There is no primary art outside these two arts, for their origin is far earlier than man himself; and dancing came first.

To build means to make architecture real on the borders of knowledge.

Concepts differentiate architecture from mere building...A bicycle shed with a concept is architecture; a cathedral without one is just a building.

The way I look at a musical, you are commenting on the human condition no matter what you do. A musical may be light and frivolous, but by its very nature, it makes some kind of social comment.