In northern architecture - the cathedrals of Europe and all the little churches - the details, the carving of stone, become necessary because the light is not there to help you very much. You have to enrich surfaces. The desert reduces form to its simplest nature. There is no need for gargoyles or flying buttresses in the desert.
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
One of the dilemmas of architecture in general is that there is a Catch-22 - you can't actually get to be commissioned to do certain types of building until you've already built that type of building. So it seems to be incredibly hard to get going.
I'm not a religious person. But, when I look at a beautiful cathedral, what brings awe, what induces awe is the idea that architecture, you know, a beautiful cathedral, a beautiful building.
If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong.
The dialogue of architecture has been centered too long around the idea of truth.
The more centralized the power, the less compromises need to be made in architecture.
The British political system and the whole clapped out Westminster architecture, and the language that we use about politics, it's completely unsustainable. You either decide to be part of that transition to do something different. Or you cling to old certainties.
If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.
Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.
The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical.
As a child, my father's architecture seemed to me to be industrial in a way. It seemed harsh and kind of chilly; I didn't respond to it.
I got into architecture via fine arts, and I was a sculptor myself, and I have always involved artists in my projects. When I say 'involved,' I mean I always bring artists in at the beginning projects before they're built and say, 'Will you do a room? Will you do a sculpture floating in mid-air? Will you make a chimney? Will you do something?'
The reason we chose vertical landing as our recovery architecture is that vertical landing scales really well.
London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.
Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building.
Historically, in the world of architecture, enormous amounts of care and energy have been lavished on things that are almost a cliched idea of culture.
I absorbed as many Impressionist paintings as I could, in Parisian museums and in many museums in the United States and in books, looking for clues to architecture, clothing, settings.
We were kind of arrogant when we started and became really humbled as we were doing architecture. It's really hard to work with budgets and deadlines and all of these collaborators and all of these voices and special interests.
I got into this little habit of architecture and building. I designed a house in Colorado and one in Hawaii. The idea is supposed to be build and sell - but then I can never bring myself to sell them.
