Architect Quotes - page 4
First were the thick stone walls, the arches, then the domes and vaults - of the architect, searching out for wider spaces.
Now it is concrete-reinforced that gives our imagination flight with its soaring spans and uncommon cantilevers. Concrete, to which architecture is integrated, through which it is able to discard the foregone conclusions of rationalism, with its monotony and repetitious solutions.
A concern for beauty, a zest for fantasy, and an ever-present element of surprise bear witness that today's architecture is not a minor craft bound to straight-edge rules, but an architecture imbued with technology: light, creative and unfettered, seeking out its architectural scene.
Oscar Niemeyer
The word model is used as a noun, adjective, and verb, and in each instance it has a slightly different connotation. As a noun "model" is a representation in the sense in which an architect constructs a small-scale model of a building or a physicist a large-scale model of an atom. As an adjective "model" implies a degree or perfection or idealization, as in reference to a model home, a model student, or a model husband. As a verb "to model" means to demonstrate, to reveal, to show what a thing is like.
Russell L. Ackoff
And now about architects in general – I have to say it, Does [= Theo van Doesburg ], when 'De Stijl' was founded I left it up to you, but I never did agree with you when you ranked the architects alongside us, alongside our 'N. B.' ( / Neo-Plasticism) I knew then that it would lead to conflict... I cannot write about architecture, because I'm not an architect. I mean, I cannot write about the way I write about painting. Later on, though, I will put forward a few ideas.
Piet Mondrian
It has become obvious to the new architect that by virtue of his work he is taking an active part in the building of a new world. For us the work of an artist has no value 'as such'; it does not represent an end in itself; it has no intrinsic beauty. The value of a work of art is determined by its relationship to the community.. .The artist, or the creative worker, invents nothing; there is no such thing as divine inspiration. Thus we understand by the term 'reconstruction' the conquest of the unresolved, of the 'mysterious,' and the chaotic. In our [Russian] architecture, as in our entire life, we are striving to create a social order, i.e., to raise the instinctive to a conscious level.
El Lissitsky
In America the architect has a direct and continuing relationship with technology. Perhaps this is why he does not ask more from technology than it can offer. In our country [Russia] it is still impossible to have such urban complexes as are found in Paris, Chicago, or Berlin. It is through technology that we can build a bridge to all the most recent achievements, which is what made it possible for our country to pass directly from the hoe to the tractor without having to travel the long path of historical development. That is why we want to introduce the most modern methods of building and construction into our country - and why we see the works and designs of both the 'formalists' and the 'constructivists' as a radical experiment in the manipulation of construction.
El Lissitsky
What we demand from the Soviet architect is that, as an artist and because of his perceptive intellect, he will fully comprehend and amplify the faintest ripple of developing energies much sooner than the masses - who tend to be shortsighted as far as their own growth is concerned - and that he will transform this energy into tangible architectural form.. .The club's role is to become a University of Culture. If one accepts the premise that private dwellings should strive to operate on the basis of the greatest possible austerity, then by contrast, public dwellings should provide the maximum of available luxury accessible to all. The term 'reconstruction' is therefore not applicable to this case, since there is no building precedent in the past.
El Lissitsky
For with what eyes of the mind was your Plato able to see that workhouse of such stupendous toil, in which he makes the world to be modelled and built by God? What materials, what bars, what machines, what servants, were employed in so vast a work? How could the air, fire, water, and earth, pay obedience and submit to the will of the architect? From whence arose those five forms, of which the rest were composed, so aptly contributing to frame the mind and produce the senses? It is tedious to go through all, as they are of such a sort that they look more like things to be desired than to be discovered.
Cicero
Through all these researches into an art that would lead to immaterialisation, Werner Ruhnau [German architect] and I came together in the architecture of the air. He was hindered by the last obstacle that even a w:Mies van der Rohe [also a German architect, famous for his reflecting glass skyscrapers in the U. S. ] hadn't been able to overcome: the roof, the screen that separates us from the sky, from the blue sky. And I was hindered by the screen that the tangible blue on the canvas constitutes, which deprives man of a constant vision of the horizon.
Yves Klein
But the projects with which the architects of Russian proletarian architecture present us are not only based on pure imagination, but their construction would, if they were fitted for realization, entail enormous waste of space and materials. The dwelling complex 'Wolkenbügel' [architecture, designed by Lissitzky, with the help of [ w:Emil Roth - Swiss architect, 1924] (assuming that one could live here without either freezing or melting!), shaped like a 4, stands in a very un-constructive way on three legs in which the elevators are located. The latter take up as much space as would one or more skyscrapers. And these 'architects' are to teach the West what architecture is!
Theo van Doesburg
Christopher Wren, the leading architect of London's reconstruction after the great fire of 1666, lies buried beneath the floor of his most famous building, St. Paul's cathedral. No elaborate sarcophagus adorns the site. Instead, we find only the famous epitaph written by his son and now inscribed into the floor: "si monumentum requiris, circumspice”-if you are searching for his monument, look around. A tad grandiose, perhaps, but I have never read a finer testimony to the central importance-one might even say sacredness - of actual places, rather than replicas, symbols, or other forms of vicarious resemblance.
Stephen Jay Gould
