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It is the rare architect who does not hope in his heart to design a great building and for whom the quest is not a quiet, consuming passion.

Ada Louise Huxtable

Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history.Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Consuming Embellishment Enough Establishing History Human Inability
Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

More Obsolete Railroad System Today
Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art Civilization Draw Magnetic Physical Strong
Every creative act draws on the past whether it pretends to or not. It draws on what it knows. There’s no such thing, really, as a creative act in a vacuum.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Creative Creativity Draw Know Past Pretend
Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art Cutting Grind History Purpose
Some people wait constructively; they read or knit. I have watched some truly appalling pieces of needlework take form. Others – I am one of them – abandon all thought and purpose to an uneasy vegetative states.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Appaling Needlework People Piece Some Truly
That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Class Jersey Pretty Turn Wasteland
Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line,
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art Demeaning Deprived Feeling Reduce Self
There are few violations of this taste, and there is exemplary architectural consistency. Paris has defined the aesthetics of a sophisticated urban culture.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Aesthetic Centuries Developed Proved Violation
And infrastructure, on its already tenuous livability, overrides any aesthetic. … Art becomes worthless in a city brutalized by overdevelopment.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Aesthetic City Infrastructure Override Sunlight
No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Home Matter May Monummentaist
Really living without clutter takes an iron will … This involves eternal watchfulness and that oldest and most relentless of the housewife’s occupations, picking up.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Clutter Feeling. Oldest Involve Iron Long Most
The skyscraper and the twentieth century are synonymous; the tall building is the landmark of our age.Shaper of cities and fortunes, it is the dream, past and present, acknowledged or unacknowledged, of almost every architect.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Age Building Cities Dream Landmark Past Tall
The style of Parisian architecture has been proved and refined by at least three centuries of academic dictates and highly developed taste.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Academic Architecture Century Developed Dictate
Clutter in its highest and most organized form is called collecting.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Clutter Collecting Form Highest Organised
A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Disaster Imagination Marble Substituted

It is the rare architect who does not hope in his heart to design a great building and for whom the quest is not a quiet, consuming passion.

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It is the rare architect who does not hope in his heart to design a great building and for whom the quest is not a quiet, consuming passion.

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