Dullness is the enemy.

Glibness will get your anywhere.

I'm about four skyscrapers behind.

Architecture is art, nothing else.

The future of architecture is culture.

We do pretty much whatever we want to.

Pick very few objects and place them exactly.

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.

I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.

When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.

Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.

The best thing to do with water is to use a lot of it.

I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.

Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.

Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects.

Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating.

I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.

There's no worse feeling than seeing my buildings and realizing the mistakes.

In our universal experience unintelligent material processes do not create life

I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.

Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.

American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.

I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.

The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.

Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.

Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.

So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin. Anything goes.

I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.

If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.

I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?

I get between nine and ten hours of sleep. Go to bed at 8:30 and get up at 6:00 or 6:30 if I oversleep.

We all see the world differently. And thank God for that. Otherwise, what a boring world this would be.

There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.

The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.

You're going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You'll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead.

The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.

There's only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction.

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.

I guess I can't be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring.

Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.

To sum up the state of architecture in America: ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.

Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.

Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?

From the very fact the universe is on the whole orderly, in a manner comprehensible to our intellect, is evidence that we and it were fashioned by a common intelligence.

To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own.

I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.

Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we've both got to say yes to someone if we want to stay in business.

Share This Page