Architectural Challenges Quotes

Each building has to be beautiful, but cheap and fast, but it lasts forever. That is already an incredible battery of seemingly contradictory demands. So yes, I'm definitely perhaps contradictory person, but I operate in very contradictory times.

You can say I'm not the easiest architect in the world, because I'm always trying to push the limits.

The development of the New Architecture encountered serious obstacles at a very early stage of its development. Conflicting theories and the dogmas enunciated in architects' personal manifestos all helped to confuse the main issue.

When I got the opportunity to do the new wing [the Schauhaus] for the German Historical Museum, for instance, I didn't see it as an opportunity for my own ego, to do something so exciting that every architectural publication would want to put it on the cover. I accepted it because I knew it was going to be a very difficult project, and I wasn't sure I could do something exciting there.

Even here in California with more contemporary buildings. I have a real problem with the low doorframes. It's a curse! That's just another of the many problems I have to live with.

New York being what it is, our museums are vertical, not horizontal. That means the stumbling blocks to architectural clarity are unavoidable - but certainly surmountable.

Of course, living in an all-glass house has its disadvantages...but you should see the birds smack it.

Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.

He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building.

Studing jewelry gives you an incredible technical background. If you can work on very, very small things, then, I think, typically you find it easier to go bigger rather than the other way around. I think a lot of architects have struggled with small things. Whereas if you start small, it's easier to get bigger.

I think architects are often at their best when faced with restraints.

The British government - any government - is potentially the worst [architectural] client in the world.

There are too many steps in this castle, and it seems to me they add a few every night, just to vex me" - Maester Cressen

Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.

The beauty of my profession [architecture] lies in its randomness and surprise. And don't think I can choose my projects. I have to build what's offered to me.