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 HUXTABLEEvery 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.
More Ada Louise Huxtable Quotes
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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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California … is the place that sets the trends and establishes the values for the rest of the country; like a slow ooze, California culture spreads eastward across the land.
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Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind.
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Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style.
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I have a feeling that picking up will go on long after ways have been found to circumvent death and taxes.
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Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know.
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Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.
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Waiting is a special kind of activity – if activity is the right word for it – because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives.
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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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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.
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An excellent job with a dubious undertaking, which is like saying it would be great if it wasn’t awful.
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The building is a national tragedy – a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried.
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No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.
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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.
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If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers.
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