Top 20 Architectural quotes.

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Curiously enough, architects have expressed themselves and their thoughts in many profound ways. Many are 'thought bites' which carry more than one layer.

These are (my) top (favourite) architectural quotes (though a few are generic and can be applied to all forms of design). Enjoy..!


The sun never knew how great it was until it struck the side of a building.
Louis Kahn

 I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.
Le Corbusier
Be the best, not necessarily the original. 
I M Pei


 God is in the details.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe


 An expert is a man who has stopped thinking - he knows!
Frank Lloyd Wright

 Form ever follows function.
Louis Sullivan

 I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?
Philip Johnson




Less is more
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty... but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
R. Buckminster Fuller

 But the building’s identity resided in the ornament.
Louis Sullivan

 Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication..
Leonardo Da Vinci

 Less is a bore.
Robert Venturi

 The nature of space reflects what it wants to be.
Louis Kahn

 The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright

 We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. 
Winston Churchill

 There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons.
Edwin Lutyens

 I don’t want to be interesting. I want to be good.
Mies van der Rohe

 It is not an individual act, architecture. You have to consider your client. Only out of that can you produce great architecture. You cannot work in the abstract.
I M Pei

Architecture begins where engineering ends
Walter Gropius

 Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson

(In fact, I wanted to place Lutyens and Pei on the top of list since they reflect more than truth.!)

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