Gaston Bachelard Quotes

A pool at the edge of the ocean is the simplest geometry, yet you feel connected to the sea. In a forest with the mountains in the background, you also feel the connection to nature, yet it's a very complex geometry. I think architecture is about controlling these feelings.

The sense of space within the reality of any building is a new concept wherever architecture is concerned. But it is essential ancient principle just the same and is not only necessary now but implied by the ideal of democracy itself.

My buildings don't speak in words but by means of their own spaciousness.

You might say that when you step inside, you're entering a honorific space, but that's something totally different than experiencing it. And in architecture the experience comes first. That has the deepest effect on us.

The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.

When I design buildings, I think of the overall composition, much as the parts of a body would fit together. On top of that, I think about how people will approach the building and experience that space.

I think size is the most unused quotient in the sculptor's repertoire because it requires lots of commitment and time. To me it's the best tool. With size you get space and atmosphere: atmosphere becomes volume. You stand in the shape, in the zone.

Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.

My buildings should have an emotional core - a space which, in itself, has an emotional nice feeling.

I think space, architectural space, is my thing. It's not about facade, elevation, making image, making money. My passion is creating space.

I can sing the saddest song with a bunch of people, and the feeling of sharing that energy activates in a way that either heals it or makes me feel like I've risen a thousand miles above it into space, and I'm staring down on it as a little dot.

Architecture is about experience: not only visual but also what you can touch, what you can feel.

A show is good when there is a meeting of time and space, when time and space become irrelevant.

I think architecture is one of the predominant orderings of social space. It can construct and contain our experiences. It defines our days and nights. It literally puts us in our place.

Architecture falls between art and airports. It's pragmatic-it helps you get from point A to point B. But it also works as art. It makes you think twice. It inspires you. It brings you back to yourself.

What a house - nothin' but rooms!

When I think of a place of worship, I think of a place where one can sit and be reminded of all the things that are important outside our individual lives. To express spirituality, the architect has to think of the original material of architecture, space and light.

She supposed that houses, after all - like the lives that were lived in them - were mostly made of space. It was the spaces, in fact, which counted, rather than the bricks.

When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it's lost space when there's something in it.

Music links us humans, heart to heart...Across time and space, and life and death.

Cut out doors and windows for the house. The holes make it useful.

Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

What is a house but a bigger skin, and a neighborhood map but the world's skin ever expanding?

Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can't be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole.

I want to create a space that moves people. It doesn't matter if it is a house, or a museum, or whatever. So, it is somebody sitting on that lawn, just going around and around and feeling really happy. That is something that I'm striving for.