Contextual Architecture Quotes

Before 2000, everything was about being contextual, and buildings were supposed to be good citizens.

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.

I'm trying to create architecture as landscape. But I'm not copying nature.

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.

Architectural features of true democratic ground-freedom would rise naturally from topography, which means that buildings would all take on the nature and character of the ground on which in endless variety they would stand and be component part.

A proper building grows naturally, logically, and poetically out of all its conditions.

There's something really interesting about current urbanism: the only model is the universal model, and there is increasingly incapacity to consider the virtues and the qualities that are there, and then to build on them. The only thing is complete transformation.

I think it's important to approach a house in a way that's reflective of the original environment. Maybe I'm a sentimentalist, but I think that certain geographies call out for certain architecture. I like residences that reflect their place.

I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects.

I want my buildings to take root and look as if they've always been there. It isn't about pastiche or adapting what's already there. It's about trying to blend the future and the past.

There are essentially two possibilities. One is to be, shall we say, an average architect and do the same thing everywhere. The other is to let yourself be inspired and even changed by the unique qualities of the place where you're building. We always try to take the second approach.

I'm very interested in buildings that have meaning for a particular place. I suppose it feels slightly rude to me if the imposed style that lands in a place is almost stronger than the place. For me it's about inventing a solution for each place; if people then want to know who did it, then great.

I think architecture should be a stage, not something too material - more of an environment, not a product.