architecture

🇺🇸Thomas Jefferson

Politics

"It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back."

Ai Weiwei

Art

conceptual art

b. 1957

"I spend very little time just doing '“art as art.'"

Poul Henningsen

Literature

1894–1967

"By making this chair five times as expensive, three times heavier, half as comfortable, and only a fraction as beautiful, an architect can make a good name for himself."

William Burges

Art

1827–1881

"If we copy, the thing never looks right the same occurs with regard to those buildings which do not profess to be copies; both they and the copies want spirit. They are dead bodies... We are at our wits."

🇨🇦Moshe Safdie

Education

b. 1938

"When I got my first commission after Habitat, for a few weeks I couldn't draw."

🇬🇧Edwin Lutyens

Literature

1869–1944

"If one was told that monkeys had built it, one could only say, 'What wonderful monkeys — they must be shot in case they do it again.'"

Simon Stevin

Mathematics

1548–1620

"Wonder, not miracle motto of Simon Stevin by Ad Davidse Cathie Schrier, with some of his work."

🇺🇸Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Education

modernism

1886–1969

"Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins."

🇺🇸Walter Gropius

Education

Bauhaus

1883–1969

"The mind is like an umbrella - it functions best when open."

🇷🇺Vladimir Tatlin

Art

Constructivism

1885–1953

"A union of purely artistic forms for a utilitarian purpose.."

🇬🇧Christopher Wren

Science

1632–1723

"A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth."

🇲🇽Luis Barragán

Art

1902–1988

"The Art of Seeing. It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean, to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis."

John Vanbrugh

Literature

English Baroque

1664–1726

"Vanbrugh, The Provoked Wife. Use with caution, this is an abridged and bowdlerised text."

🇫🇮Alvar Aalto

Economics

Neues Bauen

1898–1976

"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."

Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Art

Greek Revival architecture

1781–1841

"Indifference to the fine arts comes close to barbarism."

🇨🇭Le Corbusier

Art

modern architecture

1887–1965

"A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe."

🇺🇸Christopher Alexander

Philosophy

1936–2022

"In my life as an architect, I found that the single thing which inhibits young professionals, new students most severely, is their acceptance of standards that are too low."

🇺🇸Robert Venturi

Education

Postmodernism

1925–2018

"Rationalizations for simplification are still current, however, though subtler than the early arguments."

🇺🇸Ernest Flagg

architecture

1857–1947

"One of the best ways to economize in building is to economize on ugliness. ...Nothing can be greater service in avoiding ugliness than a knowledge of the principles of design."

🇺🇸I. M. Pei

architecture

International Style

1917–2019

"I. M. Pei" at the Digital Archive of American Architecture"

"Social justice, ecological survival and freedom are threatened where we allow the proliferation of societal structures which in themselves tend to work against these goals."

Rem Koolhaas

Education

deconstructivism

b. 1944

"The city is no longer. We can leave the theatre now."

🇺🇸Josef Hoffmann

Education

1870–1956

"Our aim is to create an island of tranquility in our own country which, amid the joyful hum of arts and crafts, would be welcome to anyone who professes faith in Ruskin and Morris."

🇬🇧Zaha Hadid

Mathematics

deconstructivism

1950–2016

"Having a period of - well, austerity, shall we say - certainly humbles you."

🇺🇸Frank Lloyd Wright

Education

1867–1959

"I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist’s hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion."

🇺🇸Philip Johnson

Art

postmodern architecture

1906–2005

"I like Houston. It's the last great 19th-century city. Houston has a spirit about it that is truly American, an optimism. People there aren't afraid to try something new."

Robert Hooke

Science

1635–1703

"Brief Lives, Chiefly of Contempories, set down by John Abrey, between the Years 1669-1696 Vol. 2, see Part III.—1859-1860 by John Aubrey"