Architect Quotes

I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.

You have to really believe not only in yourself;

you have to believe that the world is actually worth your sacrifices.

Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.

Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.

Architecture is like writing. You have to edit it over and over so it looks effortless

Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.

You have to go whole heartedly in anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.

The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement;

in that order and that hierarchy.

Architecture appears for the first time when the sunlight hits a wall.

The sunlight did not know what it was before it hit a wall.

The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.

Architecture is really about well-being.

I think that people want to feel good in a space ... On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure.

The straight line belongs to Man. The curved line belongs to God

Study nature. Love nature. Stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

We create our buildings and then they create us.

Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

Form follows function - that has been misunderstood.

Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois.

Design of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long.

Even a room which must be dark needs at least a crack of light to know how dark it is.

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.

A house is a machine for living in.

Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic.

The beauty of the landscape - where sand, water, reeds, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together - has never left me.

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.

If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

Life never stops. The torment of men will be eternal, unless the function of creating and acting and changing, living intensely through each day, be considered an eternal joy.

Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator.

A good city is like a good party - people stay longer than really necessary, because they are enjoying themselves.

I used to not like being called a 'woman architect.

' I'm an architect, not just a woman architect. The guys used to tap me on the head and say 'you're OK for a girl.' But I see an incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it can be done, so I don't mind anymore.

Evil can also be beautiful. The Coliseum in Rome, for example, a wonderful structure with an awful past. Just think about the bloody gladiator fights there.

To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.

The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale.

It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach.

A city is the place of availabilities.

It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.

I don't believe architecture has to speak too much.

It should remain silent and let nature in the guise of sunlight and wind

Yes, I'm a feminist, because I see all women as smart, gifted and tough.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional.

No house should ever be on a hill or on anything.

It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.

Cities must urge urban planners and architects to reinforce pedestrianism as an integrated city policy to develop lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities. It is equally urgent to strengthen the social function of city space as a meeting place that contributes toward the aims of social sustainability and an open and democratic society.

I have tried to get close to the frontier between architecture and sculpture and to understand architecture as an art.

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.

The home should be the treasure chest of living.

Even a brick wants to be something

Anything created by human beings is already in the great book of nature.

Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system.

There is no work of art without system.

The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man's life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence.

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