Minoru Yamasaki Quotes

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

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.

In addressing a task, one almost always has several possible options, sometimes only a few, and they may all be practical and functional. But they lack the aesthetic aspect that raises it to architecture.

Architecture is art, nothing else.

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.

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

Architecture begins where engineering ends.

I want to be an artist, not... a celluloid aphrodisiac.

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

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

The building's identity resided in the ornament.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

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

I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention.

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

Perhaps because of my background as a graphic designer, I'm drawn to rich and beautiful colors.

Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.

Music is art, and once you become an artist, you need to learn how to accept criticism.

I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be everything in one form: architecture and sculpture and painting.

The mere drawing and painting world of the pattern designer and the applied artist must become a world that builds again.

Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts.

As an artist, I will always give art more importance and preference than pure entertainment.