Architectural Identity Quotes

I realize that having a style would be very beneficial for my practice from a marketing standpoint, but I can't do it. I believe my responsibilities as an architect are to design the most appropriate building for the place. Each place has a distinct culture and function, which for me requires an appropriate answer.

I don't know any architects that I respect who don't have their own voice. I think the difference between architecture and the other arts is your immersion in reality.

Too many architects are just trying to make all of their buildings look like a brand, and that may be good for business, but that is terrible for the cities because they lose character. If I go to Paris, I go to see the beauty of Paris and the coherence of Paris.

My architecture is easy to understand. And enjoy. I hope it also is hard to forget.

No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.

I don't like the idea that the first preparation when you start to design your building has to put your label. I think this is not fair. It's not fair to the building or to the people, to the client, because every building tells a different story.

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

I've never left China. My family's been there for 600 years. But my architecture is not consciously Chinese in any sense. I'm a western architect.

To go back to architecture, what's organic about architecture as a field, unlike product design, is this whole issue of holism and of monumentality is really our realm. Like, we have to design things which are coherent as a single object, but also break down into small rooms and have an identity of both the big scale and the small scale.

A bridge is born of necessity, but it must establish its own identity. It should harmonize with its surroundings, and the design must transcend the purely local and transform the setting.

A first building is like a first novel, it is always autobiographical.

I guess I can't be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring.

Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots.

It is in love with its limitless horizontality, as New York may be with its verticality.

That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.

In Britain, we've tended to replace the kind of architectural culture valued in much of Europe with an in-flight magazine lifestyle - all branding, marketing and 'accessibility', a word that usually means dumbing-down.

When I was in architecture school at Princeton, the worst thing you could say about someone was that they were eclectic.

The building's identity resided in the ornament.

Architecture is essentially Human; it is the Human spirit manifesting itself. For when a Man builds, there, you've got him; you know exactly what, who and how that Man is.

I don't think I have a signature style that announces, 'This is a Safdie.' But I think star architects have seized an opportunity to go anywhere in the world to produce meaningless buildings.

I'm suspicious of the idea of architects acting like business executives, brand managers, or purveyors of luxury goods.

We try to respond as closely as we can to the nature of each city, to the traditions, to their expectations. I don't believe that architects should be imposing their style or their plans on every city in the world.

There's nothing Dutch about my architecture.

Buildings in modern cities have lost their metaphoric aspect. Much contemporary architecture is very fragmented and busy on the outside. It's like a skin or a skull, but you don't know what's inside.

You have freedom, so you have to make choices - and at the point when I make a choice, the building starts to look like a Frank Gehry building. It's a signature.