Top 45 Architectural Quotes

Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times.

I was a very interested arts student, I was always into that part of school and when I got into high school I went into architectural drafting. It gave me an understanding of how to build things and it’s really helped me put things in perspective. With my music and my movies, to me it’s all art.

It’s unfortunate that a certain type of stripped-down classicism became the in-house architectural language for 20th-century fascism. Can an architectural language recover from such an association? Yes, I think it can, because in the end what you’re talking about is a column and beam.

We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using actual geometry, actual architectural shapes and bone structure. The cut had to be perfect and layered beautifully, so that when a woman shook it, it just fell back in.

I wanted to work in the arts. My dream come true would be to be an architectural historian and work with the royal palaces and all the fabulous art collections. But I’m not committed enough.

I became intrigued with the whole development sector, going into a community, building it up, coming up with a plan from an architectural standpoint, and bringing it to fruition, especially if you’re able to make the community a better place in the process.

The essence of architecture is form and space, and light is the essential element to the key to architectural design, probably more important than anything. Technology and materials are secondary.

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.

The ultimate pleasure of architecture lies in the most forbidden parts of the architectural act, where limits are perverted and prohibitions are transgressed.

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.

Even though I build buildings and I pursue my architecture, I pursue it as an artist. I deliberately keep a tiny studio. I don’t want to be an architectural firm. I want to remain an artist.

My wife and I are art collectors and architectural crazies.

I like architectural shapes. You can’t put any shape on any body, except on the runway. In reality, it has to look and feel flattering.

For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.

The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm’s highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.

I am but an architectural composer.

Once we establish an architectural style in each park, we stick with it religiously and comprehensively so that it comes out as a gestalt.

I think space, architectural space, is my thing. It’s not about facade, elevation, making image, making money. My passion is creating space.

Light is architectural. It is sculptural.

Borne out of this, starting around the 17th Century was the Baroque era. It is my view that it is one of the architectural peak periods in western civilisation.

The Crystal Cathedral is not an attempt to be an architectural ego-statement. It’s probably the ultimate spiritual and psychological statement that could be made in architectural terms.

The Taj Mahal can be a tourist attraction, an architectural marvel, but it can never be treated as a monument of faith. After all, there is a difference between tourism and faith.

Always beware an unsigned architectural design.

It fills one with a sense of architectural possibility.

Perfection would be something that you see in ‘Architectural Digest.’

When I engaged the team at Mitchell Wall, it was clear from the beginning that this was a very special architectural firm.

As a teenager, my father took me to the shows at the Architectural Association and to places like Milton Keynes back when it was first being built. But I couldn’t find anything for me. There seemed to be despair at the possibility of the built environment possessing any imagination in the real world.

I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron’s invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture.

Snohetta promotes a more democratic workplace atmosphere than most other architectural offices. This may merely reflect prevalent employment practices in Scandinavia, but Snohetta places a stronger emphasis on group participation in the design process than typical high-style firms.

Writing generally, it may be said that in design, roof, and general aspect, Japanese Buddhist temples are all alike. The sacred architectural idea expresses itself in nearly the same form always.

The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work. Frank Gehry for instance likes to imagine his buildings as sculptures. I like to imagine my sculptures as architectural.

The centuries-old history and culture of India, majestic architectural monuments and museums of Delhi, Agra and Mumbai have a unique attractive force.

As regards my own ‘philosophy,’ I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals – such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge.

Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture.

Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.

I could walk into anyone’s home one time and draw a three-dimensional architectural plan of the inside of their home from memory, but I could not add up a column of numbers.

I think when you look at architectural photography it doesn’t help to have piles of old clothes lying on the floor. Architectural photography sets up an artifice.

The center of Western culture is Greece, and we have never lost our ties with the architectural concepts of that ancient civilization.

They couldn’t wait to get me out. My dad found my place, my mom helped me pack, and my brother was making architectural plans for my bedroom. It was just what you do at 18.

Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people’s lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society.

People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that’s ok.

Back when I was a professional model-maker at Industrial Light & Magic, my specialty was hard-edged construction – spaceships, miniature sets, and architectural stuff. These objects were sometimes just 12 inches across yet needed enough detail to fill a movie screen.

If you get hold of a head of hair on somebody you’ve never seen before, cut beautiful shapes, cut beautiful architectural angles and she walks out looking so different – I think that’s masterful.

Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families.

A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.