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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

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
The New York Hilton is laid out with a competence that would make a computer blush.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Blush Competence Country Computer Laid
That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Class Jersey Pretty Turn Wasteland
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
The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale – and ultimately it is a gamble – demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Country Extraordinary Gamble Payoff Ultimately
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
. 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
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
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
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
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
Waiting is a special kind of activity – if activity is the right word for it – because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Activity Enforced Hed People Specialist Waiting
It is the rare architect who does not hope in his heart to design a great building and for whom the quest is not a quiet, consuming passion.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Design Establishes Heart Hope Passion Quest
In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Consistency Everything Paris Structure Style
All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE

Agency Conventional Later Practice Self Sooner Stronghold
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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