Louis Kahn Quotes

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.

The level of detail and craft is something that's inscribed within the original design concept. And so when I begin to draw, I know what kind of detailing I want the building to have.

I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope.

As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall. You must love music. This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music - making a space for art is the same thing.

If I weren't involved with food, I'd be working in architecture. Design is that critical to me.

Truly great architecture always transcends its stated function, sometimes in unanticipated ways.

So what we have tried to do in our later buildings is to try to be completely consistent, as a painter is consistent or as a sculptor is consistent. Architecture also must be very consistent.

I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.

Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.

All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.

Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.

I have been criticized rather strenuously by painters and sculptors for not incorporating their work in our buildings.

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.

In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.

The building's identity resided in the ornament.

I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?

I am but an architectural composer.

Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.

For me, architecture is not just creating a space to protect people but to make them dream as well.

Ultimately, the artistic part of architecture has always interested me.

The purpose of construction is TO MAKE THINGS HOLD TOGETHER; of architecture TO MOVE US.

The architect is not only the director, but he is the composer. And, as a composer, the architect brings a sense of creativity to each building.

All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial.