Building Purpose Quotes

I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal, I had an ambition to build.

Clearly, if a building is not functionally and technically in order, then it isn't architecture either, it's just a building.

We must be as familiar with the functions of our building as with our materials. We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be.

Buildings don't exist to be pinned, like brooches, on the front of bigger structures to which they bear only the most distant of relationships.

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

Building design isn't trendy.

Buildings should serve people, not the other way around.

Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.

An architect must remember that the people working or living in his building need space - to dream, to be quiet, to find beauty somewhere.

The difference between architecture and building is that the former expresses an idea, while the latter is merely a structure built on economical principles. The value of matter depends solely on its capacities of expressing ideas.

There is a danger when every building has to look spectacular; to look like it is changing the world. I don't care how a building looks if it means something, not to architects, but to the people who use it.

I try firstly to make buildings humane.

We build buildings which are terribly restless. And buildings don't go anywhere. They shouldn't be restless.

A large number of us have developed a feeling that architects tend to design houses for the approval of fellow architects and critics, not for the tenants.

Only when architect, bricklayer and tenant are a unity, or one and the same person, can we speak of architecture. Everything else is not architecture, but a criminal act which has taken on form.

In my own work, I'd say I'm a classicist, but I look everywhere for my solutions. I don't study the toilet-living habits of my clients, although that's a popular approach. First, I think of every building in history that has been similar in purpose. Then I think of the functional program - that's a major part of the study.