Maybe it’s the buildings, maybe it’s the weather, but you can see it affects us – that Scottish gallows humour; our tendency towards bleakness, to look at things in a negative way. Those definitely come out in my writing.
In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.
The ‘International Style of Modernism’ came with the advent of building services. In the end, the architecture became like a container space, essentially like a boring box with a basement full of machinery to make it inhabitable. As a result, buildings literally started to look identical all over the planet.
I feel this is very important for us to have serene buildings because our civilization is chaotic as it is, you see; our whole machine age has brought about a chaos that has to be somehow counterbalanced, I think.
Dubai is a vibrant city: Big cars, big buildings… it reminds me of my home town, Hong Kong. People are always on the move here, and there’s a lot going on. There are some wonderful architecture and some not-so-wonderful.
We have been developing an ever closer relationship with China on climate change for many years which has led to collaboration on carbon trading, offshore wind development, on low-carbon buildings, on nuclear energy, and on carbon capture and storage – to name just some of the ways in which we’re working together.
I cannot look at modern buildings without thinking of historical ones.
Detroit’s a good investment because, first of all, the entry fee for everything is lower. And, you’ve got the talent that is here that is ambitious and motivated, so you’re going to get in on a much lower cost structure in every way, shape, or form from labor to buildings to whatever.
In 1975, the Americans suffered a spectacular military defeat at the hands of North Vietnam and the Vietcong, with U.S. helicopters seeking to rescue leading U.S. personnel from the tops of buildings as Vietnamese guerrillas closed in on the centre of Saigon.
We can appreciate but not really understand the medieval town. We cannot comprehend its compactness, the contiguity of all its buildings as a single uninterrupted whole.
Growing up, you always heard of cops beating people up behind buildings and letting them go. Now they just shoot them.
I’d hate to see new housing building accelerating while taking down buildings where there’s 50 people living in rent-stabilized apartments.
The proportions, too, in which the capital that is to support labour, and the capital that is invested in tools, machinery and buildings, may be variously combined.
There’s no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.
When drawings of the main buildings I have designed in the last five years are juxtaposed, the fact that they all involve the pursuit of certain configurations is obvious to anyone.
In every area of the world where there is earthquake risk, there are still many buildings of this type; it is very frustrating to try to get rid of them.
A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.
So what we have tried to do in our later buildings is to try to be completely consistent, as a painter is consistent or as a sculptor is consistent. Architecture also must be very consistent.
Architects have to become designers of eco-systems. Not just designers of beautiful facades or beautiful sculptures, but systems of economy and ecology, where we channel the flow not only of people, but also the flow of resources through our cities and buildings.
Because Bin Laden’s culture doesn’t permit the worship of images, they understand how powerful images are. We wouldn’t have thought of creating a visual bomb. In a way, he’s chopped down two iconic buildings, and used our very truth imagery, to express himself. It’s fascinating… I mean, dreadful.
I don’t like apartments – the idea of other people living, copulating and defecating above me – they make me feel as trapped as a slice of ham in a sandwich. When I was a student in Paris, I always rented attics right at the top of buildings, and as soon as I was making enough money, I bought houses.
I wanted to be considered a good craftsman. I wanted my dresses to be constructed like buildings, molded to the curves of the female form, stylizing its shape.
I don’t like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.
In my thesis, I made an intellectual exercise out of creating a pair of buildings that were a repeat but slightly different – dissonant things make me uncomfortable.
After 23 years closeted at Westminster, where often all you can see out of the windows are other parliamentary buildings, I appreciate space, and I retired to Dartmoor to find it.
Some of my best friends are architects. And they definitely do have ears. But I think sometimes they don’t use them when they’re designing buildings.
The rugby team is a massive part of the city and generates a real passion but there is also far more to Toulouse. I learned not only to respect the history of the club but also the area and I soon came to appreciate ‘buildings and structures.
A painter, a sculptor, a writer, they can express freely. They don’t affect society as a whole. We build buildings that have a purpose, that stay there for hundreds of years or decades.
The thing I’d really like to see is the old London Bridge, with all the old buildings around it like Shakespeare’s Globe. I’d like to walk along that. Don’t worry, I won’t get drunk and fall in.
Extreme weather threatens our energy and electric grid, federal buildings, transportation infrastructure, access to natural resources, public health, our relationships across the globe, and many other aspects of life.
I have always been very intrigued by the outside of buildings. I can just walk down the street and be content with watching facades. I don’t have to go inside.
He was mostly leaping tall buildings in the beginning. There were cases where he would leap off a tall building or swoop down, and at that point he would look like he was flying, I suppose. It was just natural to draw him like that.
Buildings should serve people, not the other way around.
Take the perspective of a journalist or scientist. Really study what’s around you. What are people wearing, what do the interiors of buildings look like, what noises do you hear? If you bring your analytical powers to bear, you can make almost anything interesting.
Often the art in New York is related to the buildings, to grandiose things.
Dubai was a property bubble. Plain and simple. Go to Dubai and see what happened. It was… what I call it the ‘Edifice complex’ – it’s just, we can grow by putting up lots and lots of buildings and trying to attract people to come here, stay here, and put up offices here and sooner or later, you put up too many.
I discovered by working with actual glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow, as in ordinary buildings.
Buildings in modern cities have lost their metaphoric aspect. Much contemporary architecture is very fragmented and busy on the outside. It’s like a skin or a skull, but you don’t know what’s inside.
When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.
I’m not a builder of buildings, I’m a builder of collections.
Not even the most secular among us can fail to be uplifted by Christianity’s architectural legacy – the great cathedrals. These immense and glorious buildings were erected in an era of constricted horizons, both in time and in space.
Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.
My buildings are not particularly expensive. It is not a tin shed. If you want a tinny car, you pay for that.
When I first came to New York City, what I was thrilled about was not the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty; it was the fireplugs in the street. These things that Jack Kirby had drawn. Or these cylindrical water towers on top of buildings that Steve Ditko’s ‘Spider-Man’ fights used to happen in and around.
Nothing requires the architect’s care more than the due proportions of buildings.
I own buildings. I’m a builder; I know how to build. Nobody can build like I can build. Nobody. And the builders in New York will tell you that. I build the best product. And my name helps a lot.
Old San Francisco – the one so many nostalgics yearn for – had buildings that related well to each other.
Failures are much more dramatic than successes, and people like drama. I think this is why automobile races draw such crowds. People expect spectacular crashes, which we tend to find more interesting than cars just racing around the track. The same is true of bridges, buildings, or any structure or machine.
Now I would go to London’s Pudding Lane on 2 September 1666 and put out that little fire. I’d love to investigate the histories of a few of the buildings that burned for Restoration Home.
