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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

Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history.Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Consuming Embellishment Enough Establishing History Human Inability
What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Build Count Experience Style Way World
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
Clutter in its highest and most organized form is called collecting.
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Clutter Collecting Form Highest Organised
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
The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art City Meet Point Skyscraper
Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Architecture Pursuit Style Unapologetic Unfettered
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
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Afford Architecture City Ultimate Deserve Keep
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
A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination.
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Disaster Imagination Marble Substituted
Real estate is the closest thing to the proverbial pot of gold.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Estate Gold Pot Proverbial Real
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
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
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
No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Home Matter May Monummentaist
Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Art Cutting Grind History Purpose

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

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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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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