Architecture Quotations

Many world-famous architects are among the ones that are quoted in the following.

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Architecture [is] concerned . . . not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design. - Herbert Simon

Architecture [is] form. - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Architecture belongs to culture. - Alvar Aalto

Architecture is about experience: not only visual but also what you can touch, what you can feel. - Ma Yansong

Architecture is involved with the world, but at the same time it has a certain autonomy. - Thom Mayne

Architecture is, above all, here for a better living. - Christian de Portzamparc

Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins. - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Buildings should serve people, not the other way around. - John Portman

Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place? - Arthur Erickson

Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times. [Largely so] - Richard Rogers

Frank Lloyd Wright made houses right up until the end. - Steven Holl

I don't see that any buildings should be excluded from the term architecture, as long as they are done properly. - Arne Jacobsen

I don't separate architecture, design, or culture. - Neri Oxman

I like things that are kind of eclectic . . . where the ancient bangs up against the contemporary. - Giambattista Valli

If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch . . . [G]et the slight variation, the self-similarity. - Charles Jencks

It is the architect's job to service everyday life. - Thom Mayne

I've spent my whole life at a drawing board, but life is more important than architecture. - Oscar Niemeyer

Look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature. - Tadao Ando

Oscar Niemeyer['s] architecture was not expensive or high tech but artistic and spiritual. I like that. - Ma Yansong

That is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at it's best. - Ben Nicholson

The beauty of architecture is it involves work that stretches over a very long time but often starts in one instant, with just one emotion, a kind of instinctual response. - Ma Yansong

There is little in the architecture of a city that is more beautifully designed than a tree. - Jaime Lerner

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture. - Arthur Erickson

We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it. - John Ruskin

You are a victim of your own neural architecture. - Leonard Susskind