Roland Barthes Quotes

Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.

When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.

In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function.

We need to rediscover the essence of the meaning of 'the use.' Architecture is, above all, here for a better living. Every gesture, every shape must be justified by various reasons that would reinforce their reason to be, their use, and will give more sense to their beauty.

To me, a building - if it's beautiful - is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.

Buildings are forms of performances.

Does it follow that the house has nothing in common with art and is architecture not to be included in the arts? Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument. Everything else that fulfils a function is to be excluded from the domain of art.

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.

Architecture is not about form

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

Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise.

If you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless... nobody wants to be in it.

It’s time for architecture to do things again, not just represent things.

The concept of architecture as analogous to landscape is something that has interested me for a long time.

A glass pitcher, a wicker basket, a tunic of coarse cloth. Their beauty is inseparable from their function. Handicrafts belong to a world existing before the separation of the useful and the beautiful.

Beauty always had a purpose: to be of service to life.

Every well built house started in the form of a definite purpose plus a definite plan in the nature of a set of blueprints.

Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.

Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

My weakness ... is architecture. I think of my work as ephemeral architecture, dedicated to the beauty of the female body.

Moller, in his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive.

A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!

Architecture is my first love, if you want to talk about what moves me... the ordering of space, the visual pleasure, architecture's power to construct our days and nights.

Tool - something with a use on one end and a grasp on the other end.

The usefulness of a pot comes from its emptiness.