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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

All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice.
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Agency Conventional Later Practice Self Sooner Stronghold
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
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.
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Century Dream Man Secaucus Standard Style Tossed
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.
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Architect Conflict Essential Little Tension Tragedy
That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.
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Class Jersey Pretty Turn Wasteland
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
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
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
Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style.
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Architecture Pursuit Style Unapologetic Unfettered
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
An excellent job with a dubious undertaking, which is like saying it would be great if it wasn’t awful.
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Dubious Excellent Job Saying Would
the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. … At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style.
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Goes Skyscraper Style Unbearable Urban
Good architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms: efficiency and beauty.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Architecture Creative Elusive Expressive Good Planning Synthesis
Real estate is the closest thing to the proverbial pot of gold.
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Estate Gold Pot Proverbial Real
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

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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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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