Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (14 May 1913 – 28 June 1975), often quoted as "C.A. Doxiadis", was a Greek architect and town planner. He became known as the lead architect of Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan, and later as the father of Ekistics.

Quotes

The realistic view of the City of the Future accepts that it will be a global city.

Building Entopia - 1975

• We need to understand what we can do and how. Otherwise we will never do it.
  • Preface, p. x

• The realistic view of the City of the Future accepts that it will be a global city.
  • Chapter 1, Ecumenopolis, p. 2

• The real city is the whole territory within which people move every day.
  • Chapter 1, Ecumenopolis, p. 15

• Conclusion: Because humanity has entered a new era of science and industry, Ecumenopolis is as inevitable as the village after the agricultural revolution.
  • Chapter 1, Ecumenopolis, p. 19

• Dimensions are not connected with the efficiency of the system; they simply make it more difficult.
  • Chapter 2, The great danger, p. 21

• When we place all these extraordinary achievements together, however we can see where we have failed: by bringing together all the elements of progress into a meaningless and inhuman system of life.
  • Chapter 3, The three futures, p. 30

• When we build a city we must answer the most basic question as for any type of project: who is the master whom we have to serve?
  • Chapter 4, Definition of Entopia, p. 38

• When we speak of quality and desirability it is not the question of one unit, but of the whole system.
  • Chapter 4, Definition of Entopia, p. 49

When we build a city we must answer the most basic question as for any type of project: who is the master whom we have to serve?

• When people like Genghis Khan tried to speed up the rhythm and conquer and organize a continent in a few generations, they did not create a synthesis, they only courted disasters.
  • Chapter 4, Definition of Entopia, p. 52

• The social aspect in city building is now completely overlooked.
  • Chapter 5, The road to Entopia, p. 60

• From the balance of the past, we have been lea to the great injustice of the present.
  • Chapter 5, The road to Entopia, p. 60

• "If we do not understand furniture we cannot understand the city,"
  • Chapter 6, The furniture, p. 70

• We should never forget that values of the past are first overlooked when a change is necessary, but later they are understood and re-established.
  • Chapter 7, The room , p. 98

• We should not forget that the value of seeing lies in the information capacity of vision.
  • Chapter 9, The house group, p. 120

• At present the machines are in control and no human values are respected.
  • Chapter 9, The house group, p. 132

• The fact that the super-markets and super shops have developed and serve wider areas of tens of thousands of people does not mean that we do not need smaller ones.
  • Chapter 10, The neighborhood, p. 134

• "we forget that the polis, no matter whether old or new, has its own dimensions and its own scale; and if we impose on it solutions corresponding to larger scales, we do it a lot of harm and we destroy all its values."
  • Chapter 11, The polis, p. 154

• We now have several hundred metropolises and they all suffer in many ways from many problems because they have not been foreseen and properly conceived.
  • Chapter 12, Metropolis, p. 171

• My conclusion is that today we are in chaos as far as the metropolis is concerned and do not do anything in the right direction.
  • Chapter 12, Metropolis, p. 171

• Ecumenopolis is under way, but we lack the overall concept and the courage to guide Ecumenopolis rather than just letting it happen by chance and necessity.
  • Chapter 15, Ecumenopolis, p. 232

• If we have the most perfect neighborhoods without proper connections between them we do not have a city, but nomadic life in a jungle.
  • Chapter 16, The need for a system, p. 240

• I begin with the clarification that I consider Society as a total system of relationships between people which are either visible or invisible and which form networks.
  • Chapter 19, The system of Society, p. 264

Our Networks are not unified.

• Our Networks are not unified.
  • Chapter 21, The system of Networks, p. 282

• The big mistake most commonly made today is that when we speak of transportation we think only of persons and goods. We forget the existence of water, clean or otherwise, moving in pipes, of gas, oil, electricity, messages, the telephones etc. The result is that we waste a lot of space and Networks.
  • Chapter 21, The system of Networks, p. 286

• To the right I see the forces which lead to dystopia. It is the big corporation which built the tower on top of the small hill which tells me: "Fly ABC Fortresses!" Airplanes have to be built like fortresses to avoid skyjacking attacks by the passengers.
  • Chapter 23, The great dystopia of 1984, p. 298

• We now open our eyes, we see the explosion, we understand the confusion and its causes, we have an exact diagnosis of our disease and we can begin the therapy, not by nervous and uncoordinated magical solutions, but by properly conceiving and trying to build the Entopia we badly need.
  • Epilogue, p. 308