Ita
Aphorisms of architecture
Slogans and writings that have left their mark
“… Architect I will call the one who will know with certain and marvelous reason, and rule, yes with the mind, and with the soul divide; yes with the work bring to end all those things, which by means of movements of the weights , joining, and massing of bodies, can be accommodated with great dignity to the use of men … “
Leon Battista Alberti
Architecture is the skilful, rigorous and magnificent play of volumes assembled in light.
Le Corbusier
“Structural invention can only be the result of a harmonious fusion of personal inventive intuition and impersonal, realistic, inviolable static science”.
Pier Luigi Nervi
“The real object of the dispute is the inhabitant, the citizen. The citizen must regain the sense of belonging to the city and the civic passion, in a word what the French call “citoyenité”. The citizen has the duty to feel part of an urban process ».
Massimiliano Fuksas
Simplicity in art is, in general, a resolved complexity.
Constantin Brâncuşi
You cannot think of architecture without thinking of people.
Richard Rogers
The answer in architecture must always contain the problem.
A good solution in architecture always clearly expresses the problem from which it starts.
His problem, his reason for being.
Giorgio Grassi
…. “Our eyes are made to see shapes in light: shadows and lights reveal shapes …”
Le Corbusier
“… Constructive clarity brought to its exact expression. This is what I call architecture …”
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
History is a way for an architect to become aware of the nature of the terrain on which we walk, but we must not be under any illusions about its ability to teach us the art of walking.
Vittorio Gregotti
“Bic / Bic / Bic – Bic Cristal – Nobody draws just to draw. Drawing is not a hobby, drawing, in architecture, means having to solve a problem. Architects draw for duty, not for pleasure; like in the School of Fine Arts, where there was a timetable, a model, a professor, and we pupils locked between the easels …….….. Read more …… >>
My concept of architecture embraces the entire environment of human life; we cannot escape architecture as long as we are part of civilization, since it represents the set of modifications and alterations made on the earth’s surface, in view of human needs, except for the pure desert.
William Morris
A city, on balance, must be able to be lived efficiently.
A house and furniture must be able to be inhabited, and inhabited comfortably.
An armchair, a chair must be comfortable in the broadest sense of the word.
A machine and an object of use must work.
Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani
Architecture is a harmonious composition of elements in space to correspond to a specific practical purpose.
Ernesto N. Rogers
My work as a historian was a conscious tool to put myself in a position to “make” architecture, inextricably intertwined with other existing architectures.
Paolo Portoghesi
If I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I will choose one that is all smooth and not one in the shape of a heart or a baby in swaddling clothes or a knight, completely covered with ornaments. Fifteenth-century man will not understand me. But all modern men will understand me perfectly well. The defender of ornament believes that my drive for simplicity is tantamount to mortification. No, illustrious professor of the School of Applied Arts, I do not mortify myself at all! It’s that I like it more like this. The culinary compositions of past centuries, which exhibited all possible ornaments to make peacocks, pheasants and lobsters appear more appetizing, have the opposite effect in me. It is with horror that I wander around a food exhibition, if the idea of having to eat those stuffed carrion crosses my mind. I eat roast beef. (ORNAMENT AND CRIME)
Adolf Loos
«Architecture is a fact of art, a phenomenon that arouses emotion, beyond the problems of construction, beyond them. Construction is to hold up: Architecture is to move. “
Le Corbusier
Architecture is too important to be left to architects.
Giancarlo De Carlo
“… Composing means putting together various things to make one. But different things can become, all together, one only because a relationship is established between the components, where they influence each other, establishing the synthesis, through an internal dialectical relationship … “
Ernesto Nathan Rogers
It is difficult to think of a wall without thinking of the possibility of a void that reveals the depth of the wall itself.
Enric Miralles
The artistic genius acts like those extremely high temperatures that have the power to dissociate combinations of atoms and group them in an absolutely opposite order, responding to a completely different kind.
Marcel Proust
“… My concept of architecture embraces the entire environment of human life; we cannot escape architecture, as long as we are part of civilization, since it represents the set of modifications and alterations made on the earth’s surface, in view of the human needs, except the pure desert … “
William Morris
Architecture is a science, which is adorned with many knowledge, and with which all the works that are done in every art are regulated.
Vitruvio
Beauty comes from the direct relationship between building and purpose, from the natural properties of the material and from the elegance of the building
Bruno Taut
Constructive clarity brought to its exact expression. This is what I call architecture.
Mies van der Rohe
The passage of time and the evolution of events bring architecture, sculpture and painting inevitably towards a synthesis
Le Corbusier
Architecture is the art of manufacturing.
Francesco Milizia
Architecture is the art of arranging and adorning buildings, erected by man for any purpose, so that their mere sight can contribute to health, strength and enjoyment of the spirit.
John Ruskin
It is difficult to think of a wall without thinking of the possibility of a void that reveals the depth of the wall itself.
Enric Miralles
… the idea arises that around the small processes of building small things, experimentation can move from the drawing board to continue in the workshop and on site. At its own pace. During which we learn. During which the furniture, the lamp, the hardware are designed. During which he calmly alters or corrects himself. During which the error in the interpretation of a design can be the time to ask other questions.
Eduardo Souto de Moura
“If I were not an optimist, it would be impossible for me to be an architect.”
Norman Foster
A plastered reinforced concrete is a bestiality, no matter how good the bricklayer is.
While in its essence reinforced concrete has the idea of strength.
When it’s plastered, no one knows if it’s reinforced concrete or twenty-six brick. It means that you have to be genuine, try as much as possible to enhance a given material.
Carlo Scarpa
Space, space: architects always talk about space! But the creation of a space does not automatically mean architecture. With the same space, it is possible to make a masterpiece or cause a disaster.
Jean Nouvel
The Italian-style house is not the padded and garnished refuge of the inhabitants against the harshness of the climate as it is of the houses beyond the Alps where life seeks, for long months, shelter from the inclement nature: the Italian house is like a place chosen by us to enjoy in our life, with happy possession, the beauties that our lands and our skies give us in long seasons …… >>
Giò Ponti
I hate holidays. If it is possible to build buildings, why sit on the beach?
Philip Johnsons
“Every great architect is – necessarily – a great poet. He must be the original interpreter of his time, of his era, of his instant.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
The beauty of being an architect is that you can walk in your dreams.
Harold Wagoner
If nature had been comfortable, humanity would never have invented architecture.
Oscar Wilde
Each material has a formal language that belongs to it and no material can claim forms that correspond to another material … (read more)
Adolf Loos
“Architecture is the perennial struggle between man and nature, the struggle to overwhelm nature, to take possession of it. The first act of architecture is to place a stone on the ground. That act transforms a natural state of nature into a cultural state; it is a sacred act. “
Mario Botta
“Any architectural work that does not express serenity is a mistake”
Luis Barragán
We will still need a long time to know the exact shape of a table, a chair, a house
Henry Van De Valde
The city is a wonderful emotion of man. The city is an invention, indeed: it is the invention of man.
Renzo Piano
Architecture is the creation of volumes, and its purpose is not to cover but essentially to enclose space.
Peter Behrens
“The art of the decorator consists in doing in the houses of others what you would never dream of doing in your own”
Le Corbusier
“The work is not only the object, but also what surrounds it and the voids, the spaces.”
Oscar Niemeyer
“Architecture is a fact of art, a phenomenon that arouses emotion, beyond construction problems, beyond them.”
Le Corbusier
“Architecture is the adaptation of forms to opposing forces.”
John Ruskin
“Modern architecture, abstractly stereometric, destroys all sensitivity for the structure and decomposition … We have created nothingness around things.”
Carlo Scarpa
Space, light, order. These are things that men need, like they need bread or a place to sleep.
Le Corbusier
“… Michel Angelo, Prencipe delli Architetti, said that those who follow others never go before them and I certainly would never have placed myself in this profession with the aim of being a copyist only …”
Francesco Borromini
A house is not a car to live in. It is the shell of man, his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation.
Eileen Grey
The best way to predict the future is to plan.
Buckminster Fuller
Beauty is agreement and harmony between the parts in such a way that it is not possible to add, remove and change anything without compromising the whole.
Leon Battista Alberti
“Making architecture means building buildings for people, universities, museums, schools, concert halls: they are all places that become outposts against barbarism.”
Renzo Piano
Space is the breath of art.
Frank Lloyd Wright
“Architect Siza, why did you design these houses here, at this point?”
Siza: “because it was the only place I was given”.
Alvaro Siza
“There is a lot of work in this object”, we use to say contemplating a well-finished object and believing that we understand the care and skill of the craftsman who created it. That our work really hides inside the things that succeed happily, is a thought that takes us to the limits of reflecting on the value of a work. Would our work really fit into things? Sometimes, when an architectural construction strikes me like a piece of music, a work of art or a painting, I am tempted to believe it.
Peter Zumthor
We do not want something straight or crooked, neither intelligent nor stupid, we do not want it either coarse or refined, we must know everything so that we can only take from the whole what is truly essential and important. In order to get as close as possible to what is right we must always be very scrupulous; nothing will be as enemy as superficiality, we will have to continually repeat to ourselves: if this is necessary, let it be little, but it is essential from every point of view.
Heinrich Tessenow
“I create an architectural order on the basis of geometry: squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. I try to use forces in the area where I am building, to restore the unity between the house and nature”
Tadao Ando
My architecture is made with the architect’s tool, which is drawing and only drawing
Carlo Scarpa
The symmetry will be the better the more difficult it is to distinguish its axis
Heinrich Tessenow
“I’ve never really been interested in the right transparency. In fact, I’ve always been suspicious of it. The area where I feel most comfortable is the distance between translucent and opaque.”
Steven Holl
Where technology is overcome, architecture begins
Mies van der Rohe
“…. No matter how institutionally or technologically advanced society becomes, a house where nature can be felt represents the ideal environment for me to live in ……”
Tadao Ando
“Bic / Bic / Bic – Bic Cristal – Nobody draws just to draw.
Drawing is not a hobby, drawing, in architecture, means having to solve a problem.
Architects draw for duty, not for pleasure; like in the School of Fine Arts, where there was a timetable, a model, a professor, and we pupils closed in between the easels. To draw, in Architecture, is to race against time, to take what is at hand: a box of matches, a tram ticket, an upturned pack of cigarettes, air sickness bags, or our notebook, which must not have valuable paper.
The paper, if it is of good quality, thick, intimidates us, we perform ceremonies, inhibits us from gestures, and it is not for the weight of the paper that we pass on to posterity.
Even the pen must be trivial, light, anonymous and available in every corner of the city.
A branded pen, of good design, distracts us from the lens, distracts us because we feel its weight, the quality that prevents it from becoming clogged even if the gestures are frenetic.
Even drawing with a pencil may not be the best solution. When we see that we are getting lackluster results, we could indulge in lovely textures, hint at nuances of graphite and delay the indelible: “The Construction of Form”. (As for adding colors, then, not even talking about it).
I almost always draw and write with a Bic Cristal, black, the same for forty years. It does not spread, the stroke does not vary, it writes even if you forget it open, it is always available in any shop.
When it finishes, it becomes virgin again, transparent, and there are 14.5 cm of plastic to throw away. With half a euro we can start splashing again, until the next one and so on… “
Eduardo Souto de Moura
