About Hugh Hardy: Hugh Hardy is an American architect. He is known for his work designing theaters, performing-arts venues, public spaces, and cultural facilities across the United States. Many of his designs are created in New Classical styles.
I get very excited when I go to a show - there are all these people who don't know each another who've come together to celebrate this amazing ritual. The making of community that theater provides is quite profound.
When I was in architecture school at Princeton, the worst thing you could say about someone was that they were eclectic.
Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.
When I went to India, I became absolutely obsessed with the idea of building a hotel in India. I've never done a hotel, and I'd love to do public spaces in that culture.
I am an architect, first.
I live in a loft in a building I designed, but for my dream house I'd get Frank Gehry, just to see what he'd do.
Basically, New York housing is designed by formula, with lots of restrictions.
Please, don't use a cornice as a doorstop. At least put it somewhere where people will have to look up at it. Architectural details really ought to be displayed in the same relation to the viewer as they were originally intended.
There was this enormous burst of sculptural creative juice in the nineteenth century, and all that stuff is just so decorative. Even in pieces cast from a mold, you get a more sensuous, handmade, individual sense from it.
During the Second World War, nobody built any concert halls or theaters. After the war, Lincoln Center was a very brave project because all those architects had never built a theater before. We've learned a lot since then about the nature of material...
