Architecture Quotes

Here's my favorite architecture quotes all gathered together for you. I've collected these quotes over the years from all over the place; the books I've read, radio, TV, podcasts, magazines. I've always got my eyes and ears open. You'll come across some of these as you go through the pages of House Plans Helper.

I've arranged them under these categories:

  1. Architecture education
  2. Architectural process
  3. Architecture and our emotions
  4. Architecture and our behavior
  5. Architectural styles

Architecture Quotes - Education

People kind of tend to mystify design and architecture by suggesting you need to train. Marc Newson

You can't make an architect. But you can... open the doors and windows toward the light as you see it. Frank Lloyd Wright

Did you know?

Frank Lloyd Wright was called Frank Lincoln Wright. His mother changed his middle name to her maiden name to keep it going in the family.

Architecture Quotes - Process

Architecture is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that's all. Harry Seidler

I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.
Maya Lin

Architecture and building is about how you get around the obstacles that are presented to you. That sometimes determines how successful you'll be: How good are you at going around obstacles? Jeremy Renner

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Always design a thing by considering its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. Eliel Saarinen

The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself. Frank Gehry

Did you know?

Before Frank Gehry was Frank Gehry - he was Frank Goldberg!

In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function. Michael Graves

To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects. Le Corbusier

Did you know?

Le Corbusier used to be called Charles-Edouard Jeanneret.

The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house. Thomas Reid

Each new situation requires a new architecture. Jean Nouvel

I'm gonna pick up the pieces,
And build a Lego house.
If things go wrong we can knock it down.
Ed Sheeran

Architecture Quotes - Emotion

Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul. Ernest Dimnet

Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise. Adolf Loos

Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome where stresses and strains are at ease. Buckminster Fuller

There is a powerful need for symbolism, and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart. Kenzo Tange

Architecture is a art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being. Luis Barragan

My house is my refuge, an emotional piece of architecture, not a cold piece of convenience. Luis Barragan

Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?
Arthur Erickson

Architecture Quotes - Behavior

I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture.
Tadao Ando

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

Buildings designed exclusively on scientific principles will depress their occupants and constrain their creativity. Robert Evans

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. Winston Churchill

In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your leg, it's modern architecture. Nancy Banks-Smith

Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea. Yoshio Taniguchi

The job of buildings is to improve human relations: architecture must ease them, not make them worse. Ralph Erskine

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. William Morris

The art of building emerges from the art of living. Witold Rybczynski

Architecture Quotes - Styles

Whatever the qualities of the individual building, however beautiful or elegant they may be, our first reaction is "They don't fit in." Such buildings are at best curiosities; at worst they simply look silly.
Witold Rybczynski

The 'Styles' are a lie. Le Courbusier