I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.
Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.
In our greatest universities, naturalism – the doctrine that nature is all there is – is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds.
Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.
American megalomania is largely responsible for the growth of the Skyscraper School.
I haven’t any wisdom – just a child like everybody else. I’m not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.
Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.
I wouldn’t build a building if it wasn’t of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?
I’m a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner.
I wish someone would ask me to design a cathedral.
Glibness will get your anywhere.
I used to think that each phase of life was the end. But now that my view on life is more or less fixed, I believe that change is a great thing. In fact, it’s the only real absolute in the world.
There’s no such thing as old age. I’m no different now than I was 50 years ago. I’m just having more fun.
I get between nine and ten hours of sleep. Go to bed at 8:30 and get up at 6:00 or 6:30 if I oversleep.
Early unsuccessess shouldn’t bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.
I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty, so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs – at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.
In our universal experience unintelligent material processes do not create life.
Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.
The practice of architecture is the most delightful of all pursuits. Also, next to agriculture, it is the most necessary to man. One must eat, one must have shelter. Next to religious worship itself, it is the spiritual handmaiden of our deepest convictions.