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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

No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.
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Home Matter May Monummentaist
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
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
. 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
Real serious waiting is done in waiting rooms, and what they all have in common is their purpose, or purposelessness,
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Common Real Rigor Mortis Room Waiting Wanting
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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Art Box Candy Lying National Sarcophagus 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.
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Country Established Land Rest Country Trend Value
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
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.
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Art Civilization Draw Magnetic Physical Strong
The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.
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Art City Meet Point Skyscraper
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
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
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
That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.
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Class Jersey Pretty Turn Wasteland
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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