Louis Kahn Quotes

Quotes about:

• The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.

  Louis Kahn

  Sun, Sides, Architecture

  "The Wurmanizer". www.wired.com. February 1, 2000.

  349 Copy quote

• I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and material as spent Light. What is made by Light casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

  Louis Kahn

  Light, Shadow, Made

  Patricia Cummings Loud, Louis I. Kahn, Duke University. Museum of Art (1989). “The Art Museums of Louis I. Kahn”, p.263, Duke University Press

  387 Copy quote

• Architecture appears for the first time when the sunlight hits a wall.
  The sunlight did not know what it was before it hit a wall.

  Louis Kahn

  Wall, Firsts, Architecture

  389 Copy quote

• Even a room which must be dark needs at least a crack of light to know how dark it is.

  Louis Kahn

  Dark, Light, Cracks

  335 Copy quote

• Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.

  Louis Kahn

  Inspirational, Motivational, Death

  ":The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building:Redefining the Practice of Sustainability". Book by Bill Reed (p. 216), October 11, 2011.

  321 Copy quote

• We are born of light. The seasons are felt through light. We only know the world as it is evoked by light.

  Louis Kahn

  Light, World, Born

  365 Copy quote

• Architects in planning rooms today have forgotten their faith in natural light. Depending on the touch of a finger to a switch, they are satisfied with static light and forget the endlessly changing qualities of natural light, in which a room is a different room every second of the day.

  Louis Kahn

  Light, Quality, Different

  344 Copy quote

• You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you, 'I like an arch.' And you say to brick, 'Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.' And then you say: 'What do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: 'I like an arch.'

  Louis Kahn

  Thinking, Looks, Use

  363 Copy quote

• Architecture is the thoughtful making of space

  Louis Kahn

  Thoughtful, Space, Architecture

  Louis I. Kahn (1969). “Louis I. Kahn: Talks with Students”

  180 Copy quote

• A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

  Louis Kahn

  Mean, Architecture, Building

  "Secrets behind the world's great buildings" by Jonathan Glancey, www.cnn.com. October 26, 2016.

  341 Copy quote

• A room is not a room without natural light.

  Louis Kahn

  Light, Rooms, Natural Light

  Louis I. Kahn, Peter S. Reed (1970). “Global architecture”

  148 Copy quote

• Even a brick wants to be something

  Louis Kahn

  Want, Bricks

  206 Copy quote

• Every building must have... its own soul.

  Louis Kahn

  Soul, Building

  30 Copy quote

• All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

  Louis Kahn

  Light, Air, Shadow

  250 Copy quote

• Greek architecture taught me that the column is where the light is not, and the space between is where the light is. It is a matter of no-light, light, no-light, light. A column and a column brings light between them. To make a column which grows out of the wall and which makes its own rhythm of no-light, light, no-light, light: that is the marvel of the artist.

  Louis Kahn

  Wall, Artist, Light

  266 Copy quote

• The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

  Louis Kahn

  Art, Symphony, Needs

  Louis I. Kahn (1986). “Louis I. Kahn: l'uomo, il maestro”

  201 Copy quote

• A city is the place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.

  Louis Kahn

  Boys, Cities, Availability

  259 Copy quote

• Also marvelous in a room is the light that comes through the windows of a room and that belongs to the room. The sun does not realize how beautiful it is until after a room is made. A man’s creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of a miracle. Just think, that a man can claim a slice of the sun.

  Louis Kahn

  Beautiful, Men, Thinking

  237 Copy quote

• Architecture is what nature cannot make.
  Architecture is something unnatural but not something made up.

  Louis Kahn

  Architecture, Made, Unnatural

  176 Copy quote

• I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art.

  Louis Kahn

  Art, Inspiration, Light

  151 Copy quote

• I try to create homes, not houses.

  Louis Kahn

  Home, House, Trying

  16 Copy quote

• The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.

  Louis Kahn

  World, Firsts, Building

  163 Copy quote

• The nature of space reflects what it wants to be.

  Louis Kahn

  Space, Want

  Patricia Cummings Loud, Louis I. Kahn, Duke University. Museum of Art (1989). “The Art Museums of Louis I. Kahn”, p.260, Duke University Press

  102 Copy quote

• The Sun does not realise how wonderful it is until after a room is made.

  Louis Kahn

  Badass, Bad Ass, Doe

  145 Copy quote

• I Use The Square To Begin My Solutions Because The Square Is A Non-choice, Really. In The Course Of Development, I Search For The Forces That Would Disprove The Square.

  Louis Kahn

  Squares, Choices, Use

  180 Copy quote

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