Famous quotes by Architects

Architects

Quotes from architects reveal how design shapes everyday life, cities, and imagination. From pioneering modernists to emerging voices, these reflections touch on space, structure, purpose, and the human experience. Whether considering materials and craft or ethics and sustainability, the perspectives span bold visions and practical wisdom. They speak to students, professionals, and curious readers alike, offering moments of clarity, challenge, and inspiration. Read with an open mind and notice how the built environment mirrors values, cultures, and the aspirations of those who mold it.

"Buildings should serve people, not the other way around"

John Portman, Architect

Small: John Portman

"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

Small: Frank Lloyd Wright

"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"

Philip Johnson, Architect

Small: Philip Johnson

"In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function"

Michael Graves, Architect

Small: Michael Graves

"Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

Small: Frank Lloyd Wright

"Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

Small: Frank Lloyd Wright

"Architecture is the reaching out for the truth"

Louis Kahn, Architect

"God is in the details"

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect

Small: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

"The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization"

Stephen Gardiner, Architect

"But I absolutely believe that architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behaviour"

Thom Mayne, Architect

Small: Thom Mayne

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

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"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, Architect

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"When I design buildings, I think of the overall composition, much as the parts of a body would fit together. On top of that, I think about how people will approach the building and experience that space"

Tadao Ando, Architect

"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous"

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect

Small: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

"Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together"

Alvar Aalto, Architect

"Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate"

Addison Mizner, Architect

"All architects want to live beyond their deaths"

Philip Johnson, Architect

Small: Philip Johnson

"I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one"

Luis Barragan, Architect

"Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

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"The space within becomes the reality of the building"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

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"The home should be the treasure chest of living"

Le Corbusier, Architect

"Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city"

Frank Gehry, Architect

"The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

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"Television is chewing gum for the eyes"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

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"Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love"

Louis Kahn, Architect

"A house is a machine for living in"

Le Corbusier, Architect

"Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us"

Arthur Erickson, Architect

"If a building becomes architecture, then it is art"

Arne Jacobsen, Architect

Small: Arne Jacobsen

"Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness"

Frank Gehry, Architect

"To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it"

Daniel Libeskind, Architect

Small: Daniel Libeskind

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