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No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.

Ada Louise Huxtable

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
Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

More Obsolete Railroad System Today
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.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Goes Skyscraper Style Unbearable Urban
Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Build Clearly Clerk Country Endless Palace
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
There are two kinds of people in the world – those who have a horror of a vacuum and those with a horror of the things that fill it. Translated into domestic interiors, this means people who live with, and without, clutter.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Horror Kid Mean People Two Vacuum World
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

Age Building Cities Dream Landmark Past Tall
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
Clutter in its highest and most organized form is called collecting.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Clutter Collecting Form Highest Organised
New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Country Grandeur Hyperbole Irreverence Name
Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Architectural Reel Steel Stone Vocabulary
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
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
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
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

Chunk Consume Decoration People Special Waiting
. 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.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Admire City Country Demolished Ultimately

No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.

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No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.

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