I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.
Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.
Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in.
Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstandin g and provide a beautiful context for life's drama.
I found myself starting architecture with a deep social, Jewish, liberal conscience, and the belief that architecture is for the people. It was a do-gooder base; I was born and raised that way. I was for blacks, whites, Italians, Poles, whatever.
Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.
I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.
The idealism [in architecture] is in the formal arrangement, the relationship to the city, the use of materials that are available to me. That's where I say our powers are limited.
That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.
It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.
Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.
Generally in our world, whether in architecture or almost anywhere else, we devalue the artist, and schools at whatever level shut people down.
You see a lot of so-called architecture that part of the ego trip overpowers the functionality and the budget and all that stuff.
I attended a lecture by a gray-haired old man from Finland, who later I discovered was the architect Alvar Aalto. I was very moved. I wasn't interested in architecture, but it was a moving thing I've never forgotten.
Ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.
That's why you go into architecture - at least I did - to do things for people. I think most of us are idealists. You start out that way, anyway.
There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.
People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.
It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it.
Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.
I am obsessed with architecture. It is true, I am restless, trying to find myself as an architect, and how best to contribute in this world filled with contradiction, disparity, and inequality, even passion and opportunity.
Art is about people. I think the discussion about whether architecture is art or not is lamebrain.
Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.
Chicago's one of the rare places where architecture is more visible.
Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.
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