Oscar Niemeyer Quotes

In the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright - and you can also see it with Mies - they make new ground by raising the ground. Frank Lloyd Wright did it so beautifully with the Robie House. The roof becomes almost a new ground.

Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.

Why can't we have those curves and arches that express feeling in design? What is wrong with them? Why has everything got to be vertical, straight, unbending, only at right angles - and functional?

Today, architecture is invention. It isn't enough to just be rational - It must also be beautiful.

I have always accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin.

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.

My friend George and I were walking on the beach in Norfolk, and there were thousands of [razor-clam] shells. They were so beautiful, I thought I had to do something with them. So, we decided to make [a dress] out of them. . . . The shells had outlived their usefulness on the beach, so we put them to another use on a dress. Then Erin [O’Conner] came out and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really.

I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom.

Even though it was January, in Los Angeles it was beautiful and sunny and the blue skies were out and it was hot everyday, so I think it was just a product of our environment. And California to me as a concept or as an idea always seems like endless optimism and endless opportunity - when people think of California they think of palm trees and blue skies and gorgeous sunsets and beaches and everything else. But there's also this weirdness to California, this darkness, it's a place where people come to follow their dreams and sometimes don't make it.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

She adored all beautiful things in their every curve and fragrance, so that they became part of her. Day by day, she gathered beauty; had she had no heart (she who was the bosom of womanhood) her thoughts would still have been as lilies, because the good is the beautiful.

Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city.

Women shouldn’t deny their dark side. Sometimes those demons are frightening and sometimes they’re beautiful. You’ll have to approach them. Drink a glass of wine with them, take them for a walk on the beach, examine yourself.

Today we live in a chaos of straight lines, in a jungle of straight lines. If you do not believe this, take the trouble to count the straight lines which surround you. Then you will understand, for you will never finish counting.

For architecture, nature provides only indications and analogies, not models to imitate.

Anything that feels familiar and comfortable [is home]. It's wherever I feel safe and safest. Most of the time, that's just Barbados. It's warm, it's beautiful, it's the beach, it's my family, it's the food, it's the music. Everything feels familiar, feels right and feels safe. So, Barbados is home for me.

I'm a naturist at heart. I love being on beaches where everyone is naked. Ugly young people, beautiful old people, whatever. It's so unsexual and so liberating.

I'd love to go somewhere warm, somewhere near the beach and somewhere with a cool culture. It could be Hawaii, Cuba, South America - anywhere that has a cool culture and a beautiful climate.

I've always wanted to come here. We don't get to hear about all the wonderful things in Israel, and just looking out my window here at the hotel and seeing the beautiful beach, my goodness, it's gorgeous! I'm sure I'll be going back with raving reviews.

The little fishing boat anchors right off the shore of Gili Meno. There are no docks here on this island. You have to roll up your pants, jump off the boat and wade in through the surf on your own power. There's absolutely no way to do this without getting soaking wet or even banged up on the coral, but it's worth all the trouble because the beach here is so beautiful, so special

For me [ Giovanni Lorenzo ] Bernini, [Francesco ] Borromini, and [Donato] Bramante have been as significant as Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn. I still marvel at their works, which have a quality and a timelessness that I seek to have in our projects.

Straight lines don't exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms have at least a slight curve.

Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.

Port Talbot is a steel town, where everything is covered with gray iron ore dust. Even the beach is completely littered with dust, it's just black. The sun was setting, and it was quite beautiful. The contrast was extraordinary, I had this image of a guy sitting there on this dingy beach with a portable radio, tuning in these strange Latin escapist songs like 'Brazil.' The music transported him somehow and made his world less gray.