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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.

Ada Louise Huxtable

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.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Delight Dimension Extra Important Sense Wonder
. 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
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
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Afford Architecture City Ultimate Deserve Keep
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
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
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.
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Consuming Embellishment Enough Establishing History Human Inability
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
New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.
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Country Grandeur Hyperbole Irreverence Name
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
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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Age Building Cities Dream Landmark Past Tall
Real estate is the closest thing to the proverbial pot of gold.
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Estate Gold Pot Proverbial Real
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
In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style.
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Consistency Everything Paris Structure Style
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

Building Delight Dimension Extra Important National Sense Tragedy Wonder
Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Build Clearly Clerk Country Endless Palace

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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