Architecture

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Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and structures.

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Sourced [edit]

  • Bridges are America's cathedrals.
    • Author unknown; reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • Silently as a dream the fabric rose;
    No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
  • Dancing and architecture are the two primary and essential arts. The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite.
  • Architects know that some kinds of design problems are more personal than others. One of the cleanest, most abstract design problems is designing bridges. There your job is largely a matter of spanning a given distance with the least material. The other end of the spectrum is designing chairs. Chair designers have to spend their time thinking about human butts.
    • Paul Graham, "Five Questions About Language Design" (May 2001).
  • Architecture worth great attention. As we double our numbers every 20 years we must double our houses. Besides we build of such perishable materials that one half of our houses must be rebuilt in every space of 20 years. So that in that term, houses are to be built for three fourths of our inhabitants. It is then among the most important arts: and it is desireable to introduce taste into an art which shews so much.
    • Thomas Jefferson, hints to Americans travelling in Europe, letter to John Rutledge, Jr. (June 19, 1788); in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (1956), vol. 13, p. 269.
  • The architect
    Built his great heart into these sculptured stones,
    And with him toiled his children, and their lives
    Were builded, with his own, into the walls,
    As offerings unto God.
  • A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality
  • Anon, out of the earth a fabric huge
    Rose, like an exhalation.
  • Nor did there want
    Cornice or frieze with bossy sculpture graven.
  • The hasty multitude
    Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise,
    And some the architect: his hand was known
    In heaven by many a tower'd structure high,
    Where scepter'd angels held their residence,
    And sat as princes.
  • Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome,
    * * * * * *
    No single parts unequally surprise,
    All comes united to th' admiring eyes.
  • I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.
    • John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), chapter III, paragraph 24.
  • When we mean to build,
    We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
    And when we see the figure of the house,
    Then must we rate the cost of the erection.
  • La vue d'un tel monument est comme une musique continuelle et fixée qui vous attend pour vous faire du bien quand vous vous en approchez.
    • The sight of such a monument is like continual and stationary music which one hears for one's good as one approaches it.
    • Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807), Book IV, Chapter III.
"Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life", page 282; by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Margaret Fuller; Translated by Margaret Fuller; Publiched of Hilliard, Gray, and company, 1839; 414 pages .
  • Architecture has its political Use; publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth…. Architecture aims at Eternity.
    • Christopher Wren, "Of Architecture", Parentalia; or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, comp. by his son Christopher (1750, reprinted 1965), Appendix, p. 351.
  • And so, as they kept coming together in greater numbers into one place, finding themselves naturally gifted beyond the other animals in not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendor of the starry firmament, and also in being able to do with ease whatever they chose with their hands and fingers, they began... to construct shelters.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations [edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 39-41.
  • Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.
  • There was King Bradmond's palace,
    Was never none richer, the story says:
    For all the windows and the walls
    Were painted with gold, both towers and halls;
    Pillars and doors all were of brass;
    Windows of latten were set with glass;
    It was so rich in many wise,
    That it was like a paradise.
    • Sir Bevis of Hamptoun. Manuscript in Caius College.
  • Old houses mended,
    Cost little less than new, before they're ended.
  • A man who could build a church, as one may say, by squinting at a sheet of paper.
  • The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the ærial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty.
  • Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
    As the best gem upon her zone.
  • The hand that rounded Peter's dome
    And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
    Wrought in a sad sincerity:
    Himself from God he could not free;
    He builded better than he knew;
    The conscious stone to beauty grew.
  • Middle wall of partition.
    • Ephesians, II. 14.
  • An arch never sleeps.
    • J. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, p. 210 (referring to the Hindu aphorism of the sleepless arch). Also the refrain of a novel by J. Meade Falkner, The Nebuly Cloud.
  • Die Baukunst ist eine erstarrte Musik.
  • Rich windows that exclude the light,
    And passages that lead to nothing.
  • No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung,
    Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
    Majestic silence.
    • Reginald Heber, Palestine, line 163. ("No workman's steel," as recited by Heber in The Sheldonian, June 15, 1803).
  • When I lately stood with a friend before [the cathedral of] Amiens,… he asked me how it happens that we can no longer build such piles? I replied: "Dear Alphonse, men in those days had convictions (Ueberzeugungen), we moderns have opinions (Meinungen) and it requires something more than an opinion to build a Gothic cathedral.
    • Heinrich Heine, Confidential Letters to August Lewald on the French Stage. Letter 9. translation. by C. G. Leland.
  • So that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
    • I Kings, VI. 7.
  • Grandeur * * * consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof.
  • In the elder days of Art,
    Builders wrought with greatest care
    Each minute and unseen part;
    For the gods see everywhere.
  • The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.
    • Psalms. CXVIII. 22.
  • Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention.
    • John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Lamp of Memory.
  • It was stated, * * * that the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters:—the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation.
    • John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Lamp of Beauty.
  • I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: * * * with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history.
    • John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Lamp of Memory.
  • Therefore when we build, let us think that we build (public edifices) forever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone, let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us."
    • John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Lamp of Memory.
  • We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty.
    • John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Volume I, Chapter II.
  • Architecture is the work of nations.
  • No person who is not a great sculptor or painter, can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
  • Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.
  • Since it [architecture] is music in space, as it were a frozen music…. If architecture in general is frozen music.
  • Behold, ye builders, demigods who made England's Walhalla [Westminster Abbey].

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