LOUIS KAHN

How precious a book is in light of the offering, in the light of the one who has the privilege of this offering. The library tells you of this offering.

What does a house want to be?

If people want to see Beaux-Arts, it's fine with me. I'm interested in good architecture as anybody else.

Architecture struck me between the eye and the eyeball.

Every building must have... its own soul.

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.'

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

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.

The street is a room by agreement.

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.

I try to create homes, not houses.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.

Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

A room is not a room without natural light.

Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

In a small room one does not say what one would in a large room.

Even a brick wants to be something

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.

How accidental our existences are, really, and how full of influence by circumstance.

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.

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.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

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.

Just think, that man can claim a slice of the sun.