Architecture Quotes

I like complexity and contradiction in architecture.

I got my ideas from other people. I'm a thief. I'm a magpie. I steal from everybody.

I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art, it must be built on a foundation of necessity.

The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man's life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence.

Architecture is not just a question of engineering or construction, but of imagination, of poetry, of beauty.

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable.

God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is, at least for me, an abuse of paper.

God is in the details.

Our ultimate goal, though distant, is the complete building.

The architect is the organizer of the world.

The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects.

There is no such thing as a new art, but only new artists.

Form ever follows function.

There are two ways of being truthful: one is to reproduce the object as it is, the other is to reproduce it as it ought to be.

All ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building.

Architecture is the art of building beautifully.

To make a building speak, one must make it speak in its own language, that of architecture.

The beauty of architecture does not consist in the richness of the materials, but in the justness of the proportions and the elegance of the forms.

I would have the building of a noble and beautiful fabric to be as lasting as the world itself.

I have no other master than the ancient Roman buildings.