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Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death.

Ada Louise Huxtable

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.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Cal Constant Decoration Nothing Place Process
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
That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Class Jersey Pretty Turn Wasteland
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
Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Architectural Reel Steel Stone Vocabulary
The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art City Meet Point Skyscraper
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
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
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
Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Bloom City Country Convinced Demolished Until
Real serious waiting is done in waiting rooms, and what they all have in common is their purpose, or purposelessness,
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Common Real Rigor Mortis Room Waiting Wanting
All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Agency Conventional Later Practice Self Sooner Stronghold
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
Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Bad Big Building Gigantism Tombstone Tragedy Triumph
If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

British Nation Shopkeeper Shopper Shopping United States
The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale – and ultimately it is a gamble – demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Country Extraordinary Gamble Payoff Ultimately

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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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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