architectural philosophy Quotes

True architecture exists only where man stands in the center.

There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners.

Architecture theory is very interesting.

As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.

As an architect you are a builder. You are of course more than a builder. You need to be a militant, you have to be a poet, you have to be a visionary, you have to be an artist. But certainly you have to be a builder. Everything starts from there.

The modern architect is, generally speaking, art's greatest enemy.

One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again.

Architecture is not about form

An architect ought to be an educated man so as to leave a more lasting remembrance in his treatises.

Architecture is bound to situation. And I feel like the site is a metaphysical link, a poetic link, to what a building can be.

Modern architecture does not mean the use of immature new materials; the main thing is to refine materials in a more human direction.

Don't look at the superficial success, at the short-term success. Look at the deep spiritual questions that architecture has to answer. Who do you build for? Where? What should you build?

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

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.

Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism, I use architecture to reconcile the two.

Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.

When an architect is asked what his best building is, he usually answers, "The next one."

Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.

My homes are similar in style because the same design principles run through all areas of my work.

The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.

I think everything I do has Howard Roark [hero of The Fountainhead] in it, you know, as much as anything. The person I write for is Howard Roark.

I have always accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin.

There's nothing Dutch about my architecture.

Architecture is not about building the impossible, which we can do if we have enough money and enough tools and enough computers. It is about building what is appropriate and about attaining beauty through such an approach. I describe this premise as 'inherent buildability', and I believe it is central to what I do.