Frank Gehry Quotes

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.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

There is a profound ethic to architecture which is different from the other arts.

The building's identity resided in the ornament.

I am going to design... a Station after my own fancy; that is, with engineering roofs, etc.

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

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.

Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.

The level of detail and craft is something that's inscribed within the original design concept. And so when I begin to draw, I know what kind of detailing I want the building to have.

The purpose of construction is TO MAKE THINGS HOLD TOGETHER; of architecture TO MOVE US.

All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial.

It was very unusual to employ prettiness as part of a building.

Truly great architecture always transcends its stated function, sometimes in unanticipated ways.

To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.

So what we have tried to do in our later buildings is to try to be completely consistent, as a painter is consistent or as a sculptor is consistent. Architecture also must be very consistent.

When drawings of the main buildings I have designed in the last five years are juxtaposed, the fact that they all involve the pursuit of certain configurations is obvious to anyone.

Who knows, maybe I am simply a talented architect?

I have been criticized rather strenuously by painters and sculptors for not incorporating their work in our buildings.

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.

In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.

I don't build because I am an architect. I can make true architecture because I do not build.

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

Buildings designed with careful attention to aesthetics arouse and enlighten their occupants and that promotes their good health.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?