I always wanted to do something creative, but as much as I'm creative, it's in a really hard-core, right-brained way. For me, painting doesn't do it for me. There's no constraint.
A house isn't really understandable until it settles into the site: until it's built, furnished and lived in for four or five years. The reality is not on paper but in how a building sits on the land - how it relates to trees, to slopes, to water, to...
If you care to define the South as a poor, rural region with lousy race relations, that South survives only in geographical shreds and patches and most Southerners don't live there any more.
But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.
In Britain, we've tended to replace the kind of architectural culture valued in much of Europe with an in-flight magazine lifestyle - all branding, marketing and 'accessibility', a word that usually means dumbing-down.
Morris: Dots look good on paper. You don't sing them anyway, you're just showing your true Aries color now. Doyle: Stay out of my goddam face, you fucking buzzard!
[last lines] Lt. Morris Schaffer: Do me a favor, will you? Next time you have one of these things, keep it an all-British operation. Major John Smith: I'll try, Lieutenant.
Major John Smith: [referring to Colonel Turner] They say he knew Hitler quite well. Lt. Morris Schaffer: Yeah, I THOUGHT he looked a little nuts.
Social media and the Internet haven't changed our capacity for social interaction any more than the Internet has changed our ability to be in love or our basic propensity to violence, because those are such fundamental human attributes.
I studied at UC Santa Cruz before going on to do a grad program at UCLA. Santa Cruz was like an awesome hippie summer camp. I got to take a vacation from reality and hang out on beaches and in forests.
Everything is complicated about using concrete - the discipline and dedication necessary to make consistent batches, understanding exactly how the formwork will be laid, what the timing is for the pours, how you keep it clean and neat to achieve a fi...
I remember, as a young architect, people always talked about I. M. Pei's concrete. He had a particular specification no one else knew.
I make spaces that are calm rather than confrontational. I seek a certain kind of logic that allows you to move in space and perceive it as beautiful and rational. Clarity is a worthwhile quality.
You could never hide yourself in these places - in Mies's Farnsworth house, for example. That was a mistake of Modernism. People need places to hide from each other, too. You need everything.
I held a conference in Harvard where Americans said they didn't believe in risk. They thought it was just European hysteria. Then the terrorist attacks happened and there was a complete conversion. Suddenly terrorism was the central risk.
When I work, I work very hard. When I don't work, I have to do something where my endeavor can totally take me off what I do professionally, like sailing. It takes all your attention.
To lead a successful life, then, it's a good idea to work out what you really want. Then get together some plans. Then set some goals.
There are several ways to mess up your life by fighting to make your calendar age match your felt age. I live in the Southwest, a part of the country with more than its share of fair skies, material wealth, and people who are trying not to be as old ...
Architecture to me is whole. I cannot say I only care about this 25% and the other 75% I let go... it's just I want to work the way I want to work. In my shop, you can order certain things and other things you cannot. They are not available.
Architecture is involved with the world, but at the same time it has a certain autonomy. This autonomy cannot be explained in terms of traditional logic because the most interesting parts of the work are non-verbal. They operate within the terms of t...
I've always been a bit of a mix between art and technology. I used to paint a lot, but I'm not very good with my hands. It has always been a fusion between my computer gaming interests and being exposed to the rich data of society that we live in.
