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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.

Ada Louise Huxtable

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
In New York, the impact of these concentrated superskyscrapers on street scale and sunlight, on the city’s aniquated support systems, circulation
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art Cities Concentrated Country Scale Sunlight Superskyscrap
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.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art Box Candy Lying National Sarcophagus Tragedy
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
New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.
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Country Grandeur Hyperbole Irreverence Name
A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Disaster Imagination Marble Substituted
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
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Aim Art Decoration Require Self Skill Sophisticated
In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Consistency Everything Paris Structure Style
An excellent job with a dubious undertaking, which is like saying it would be great if it wasn’t awful.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Dubious Excellent Job Saying Would
Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Century Dream Man Secaucus Standard Style Tossed
The perennial architectural debate has always been, and will continue to be, about art versus use, visions versus pragmatism, aesthetics versus social responsibility.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Architectural Art Object Perennial Responsibility Versus Vision
Distinctions are no longer made, or deemed necessary, between the real and the false; the edge usually goes to the latter, as an improved version with defects corrected – accessible and user-friendly.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Deemed Distinction False Longer Necessary Real Unbearable
The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art City Meet Point Skyscraper
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.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Architect Conflict Essential Little Tension Tragedy
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.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Country Established Land Rest Country Trend Value
Clutter in its highest and most organized form is called collecting.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Clutter Collecting Form Highest Organised

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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The perennial architectural debate has always been, and will continue to be, about art versus use, visions versus pragmatism, aesthetics versus social responsibility.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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