The ideal architect should be a man of letters, a skillful draftsman, a mathematician, familiar with historical studies, a diligent student of philosophy, acquainted with music, not ignorant of medicine, learned in the responses of jurisconsults, fam...
Winning the Pritzker assures a flood of work in one's seventies and eighties, jobs necessarily carried out by assistants as the demands of modern-day cultural stardom and the inevitable waning of physical capacities prevent many architects from attai...
The members of the functional and socially mobilized under class must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable. There could be a disturbing fe...
More even than the work of the great architects, I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation, while time curbed the artist's pride and the Philistine's vulgarity, and repaired the clumsine...
As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall. You must love music. This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music - making a space for art is the same thing.
The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be...
Architects, if they are really to be comprehensive, must assume the enormous task of thinking in terms always disciplined to the scale of the total world pattern of needs, its resource flows, its recirculatory and regenerative processes.
A new, self-employed architect scientist is the one in all the world who may accelerate realization of a high-standard survival for all, as now completely practical within the scope of available technology.
A greater awareness in architects and planners of their real value to society could, at the present, result in that rare occurrence, namely, the improvement of the quality of life as a result of architectural endeavour.
Each one of us is the architect of his own fate; and he is unfortunate indeed who will try to build himself without the inspiration of God, without realizing that he grows from within, not from without.
I hate it when people let me down, when things are temporary. I think that's why I want to be an architect." "To build something permanent," I said. "A monument to last a thousand years.
L.A. is so much about ratings and box office; that defines everything. And here, of course it's important, but it's not part of the culture - there's too much else going on in New York. They're not going to let one industry monopolize your attention,...
A piece of art, when completed, encapsulates its own reality. As its architect, the artist’s task is to craft it well enough that the reader believes in its existence and is willing to enter, explore, and engage based on the artist’s version of t...
I came to America to become an architect. And somewhere along the line while I was still in school, I was lured into theater, and that's how I became interested in theater. My first play was something called 'A Banquet for the Moon.' It was a weird p...
When I started out, nearly every architect I knew was working in public practice; that's where the radical thinking was done. But, there's always a danger of looking back as our fathers did and saying, 'Things were better then.'
I think you need to, as an architect, understand the essence of a place and create a building that feels like it resonates with the culture of a place. So my buildings in India or in Kansas City or in Arkansas or in Singapore, they come out different...
The scary thing is a dramatic erosion of American position in the world - its economic, military position, as well as America's influence. Obama is not the man at the wheel desperately trying to conserve American power, influence and wealth. For ideo...
I spent more than ten years working on the Neues Museum. It was a wonderful experience, an example of real collaboration between architects, conservationists, curators, client, politicians, the media, and the public. Discussions, even when difficult,...
The first time I had sushi, I hated it. And the second time was no different, and then, I just started loving it. I actually crave for sushi. It's one of the healthiest meals. My experiments with food began when I was working in New York as an archit...
One of my bosses happened to be one of the early architects of some of the ways Internet providers work. He taught me how the cables connect, how the telecom providers work... I learned how to make my own Ethernet cables, all the way up to running a ...
! discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings. For the first time, I looked through a lens - and photography immediately started to in...
