Architectural Genius Quotes

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect.

When Oscar Niemeyer died on December 5, 2012, ten days before his 105th birthday, he was universally regarded as the very last of the twentieth century's major architectural masters, an astonishing survivor whose most famous accomplishment, Brasilia, was the climactic episode of utopian High Modern urbanism.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

And I loved Frank Lloyd Wright. I think he was the greatest man I have ever met in my life.

To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.

The genius of architecture seems to have shed its maledictions over this land.

One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.

As Fallingwater demonstrates, Wright's genius was always specific, but also always lively, always daring.

What if you're Gaudi and you know you're the best architect and everyone is saying that you're saying you're the best architect the wrong way?

I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.