Architectural Notes

A collection of notes and quotes from various sources.

[architecturalnotes]

"It's a bit problematic that all architects still see this kind of stuff as the holy grail, of course it is, but first fix your neighbourhood."

Jeroen van Lith, when talking about the Helsinki Guggenheim competition, 2014

[architecturalnotes]

Good architecture is often invisible, but it allows whatever is happening in that space to be the best experience possible.

Pezo von Ellrichshausen, RA 2014

[architecturalnotes]

Space for an architect does not exist, so we design the limits that give the impression of space.

Eduardo Souta de Moura, RA 2014

[architecturalnotes]

I see buildings falling in Glasgow. I see rubble. I ask myself where that rubble goes. I discover that it's crushed then used to build new pedestrian streets - so people are walking on the ghosts of tower blocks.

Cyprien Gaillard, New Romantic: In Conversation with Jonathan Griffin

[architecturalnotes]

Non architects have trouble reading a plan, it's like trying to envisage the shape of a body by reading footprints in the snow

David Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground

[architecturalnotes]

The badly run arrival city can turn the village into a prison; the badly run village can make the arrival city explode.

Doug Saunders, Arrival City.

[architecturalnotes]

We borrow from nature the space upon which we build.

Tadao Ando

[architecturalnotes]

To make an extraordinary material special, is banal. To heighten one's awareness of a humble material like brick, is poetic.

Adam Caruso

[harrythomasday]

Architecture is most appealing with simple lines and clear ideas. A city, on the other hand, becomes alive when it is rich with experiences and surprises. So the paradoxical challenge is to simultaneously create simplicity and variety, diversity and coherence. In other words, to create a city in the building

Bjarke Ingels (via beauxgraphismes)

[architecturalnotes]

From the time a building is completed, its destruction begins.

F.Gutheim

[architecturalnotes]

Beauty lies not only in what you see; it is often more beautiful not to see certain things.

Philip Ursprung

[architecturalnotes]

Museums are actually intensive care stations of art.

Philip Ursprung, Herzog & De Meuron, Natural History

[architecturalnotes]

There is hope in honest error; none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

[architecturalnotes]

[architecturalnotes]

[architecturalnotes]

The door handle is the handshake of a building.

Juhani Pallasmaa.

[architecturalnotes]

As we look, the eye touches, and before we see an object we have already touched it and judged its weight, temperature and surface texture.

Juhani Pallasmaa