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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

Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind.
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Art Cutting Grind History Purpose
Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death.
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Chunk Consume Decoration People Special Waiting
The New York Hilton is laid out with a competence that would make a computer blush.
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Blush Competence Country Computer Laid
Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.
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Build Clearly Clerk Country Endless Palace
In the end, these unavoidable conflicts provide architecture’s essential and productive tensions; the tragedy is that so little of it rises above the level imposed by compromise, and that this is the only work most of us see and know.
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Architect Conflict Essential Little Tension Tragedy
New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.
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Country Grandeur Hyperbole Irreverence Name
. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean.
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Admire City Country Demolished Ultimately
It supplies a necessary kind of magic to people and places that lack it. More than just a dread of empty spaces has led to the urge to decorate; it is the fear of empty selves.
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Empty Magic Necessary People Space Supplies
It is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work.
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Delight Dimension Extra Important Sense Wonder
There are two kinds of people in the world – those who have a horror of a vacuum and those with a horror of the things that fill it. Translated into domestic interiors, this means people who live with, and without, clutter.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Horror Kid Mean People Two Vacuum World
We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed
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Afford Architecture City Ultimate Deserve Keep
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

Design Establishes Heart Hope Passion Quest
There are few violations of this taste, and there is exemplary architectural consistency. Paris has defined the aesthetics of a sophisticated urban culture.
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Aesthetic Centuries Developed Proved Violation
A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination.
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Disaster Imagination Marble Substituted
Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style.
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Architecture Pursuit Style Unapologetic Unfettered
If you will; they are places for doing nothing and they have no life of their own. … their one constant is what might be called a decorative rigor mortis.
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Cal Constant Decoration Nothing Place Process
If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers.
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British Nation Shopkeeper Shopper Shopping United States
Every generation tailors history to its taste.
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Generation History Tailor Taste
The perennial architectural debate has always been, and will continue to be, about art versus use, visions versus pragmatism, aesthetics versus social responsibility.
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Architectural Art Object Perennial Responsibility Versus Vision
The age of Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is over. It will be presidential libraries from now on.
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Age Aged Explore Library Memorial Over Presential Presidential Read
Good architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms: efficiency and beauty.
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Architecture Creative Elusive Expressive Good Planning Synthesis
In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style.
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Consistency Everything Paris Structure Style
Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station.
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More Obsolete Railroad System Today
Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line,
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Art Demeaning Deprived Feeling Reduce Self
The art of decoration requires the most sophisticated and self-indulgent skills. Its aim has always been to sate the senses as gloriously as possible. … ornament is not only a source of sensuous pleasure
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Aim Art Decoration Require Self Skill Sophisticated
Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake.
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Becoming California Difficult Fake Real Take
And infrastructure, on its already tenuous livability, overrides any aesthetic. … Art becomes worthless in a city brutalized by overdevelopment.
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Aesthetic City Infrastructure Override Sunlight

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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