Timeless Architecture Quotes

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

By many a temple half as old as Time.

When I walk up the piazza of Santa Croce I feel as if it were not a Florentine nor an European church but a church built by and for the human race.

The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy... which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.

Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.

I want to abolish time, especially in the contemplation of architecture.

Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.

Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form.

I just want to make my last demand in reverence to the work of what has been done by architects of the past. what was, has always been. what is, has always been. and what will be, has always been. such is the nature of beginning.

There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way.

Cities are immortal.

Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it. In Los Angeles, it is quite the opposite: it is an older city than it might seem to be, but you don't perceive this -- every day you get out of your home, you are driving somewhere and sometimes you get this impression that everything was put there the night before.

I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age.

When I first came to Wakefield Cathedral, I thought, 'How does man conceive to build something like this?' It's a building that has transcended time over the centuries, and you appreciate the magnitude of humankind's power and vision. When you're inside, you feel as though the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.

We have become so quick and effective in building things today. It would be easy to build another Pyramid of Giza or another Great Wall. But these buildings haven't withstood the test of time because of their building quality. They stand tall because they have a symbolic value, they represent a culture.

Architecture has joined the world of fashion, but fashion is passing and architecture is timeless.

The firmest house in my fiction, probably, is the little thick-walled sandstone farmhouse of 'The Centaur' and 'Of the Farm'; I had lived in that house, and can visualize every floorboard and bit of worn molding.

Turnberry is truly one of the most spectacular properties on earth. The views, the setting, and grandeur of the hotel - there's just nothing else like it. We've respected the architectural history of the hotel first and foremost, but most of all, we've respected the tradition of golf at Turnberry.

I don't know about timeless. I actually think most of what I do is completely modern, but universally modern. Who decides what timeless even means? Are the things that we consider timeless now going to, in fact, be considered timeless in 300 years? Probably not.

I always sort of swooned at the sight of the classic barn structures in central and northern Minnesota, where everything seemed rustic and weathered and made to age gracefully.

It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.