Maya Lin Quotes

Architecture is a result of a process of asking questions and testing them and re-interrogating and changing in a repetitive way.

I am involved in the architecture of space.

I wanted to be an architect. I used to draw houses and buildings and construct buildings on my own.

If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.

What I try to do is the art of building, and the art of building is the art of construction; it is not only about forms and shapes and images.

Architecture is a service business. An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that.

I like to play with architecture! It's my favorite game.

I enjoy construction and the process of building things, so maybe I'd be a developer of some kind - residential and commercial. Because I produce a lot of television now, I enjoy building things from the ground up, whether it's a physical structure or a show, and seeing them and realizing them.

I always had some kind of creative side and technical side, and I thought architecture might be the way to combine them, so I went to architecture school in New York.

I love architecture.

If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong.

Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design.

Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together.

Architecture is invention.

I haven't done any building designs since the Loaf House.

Building is just skilled labor, I suppose. It's a lot of work. I don't mind other people building them, but the way things go together and are made is interesting to me; I like that a lot.

Building a house is like producing a movie. There's no right way to do it but a lot of wrong ways. You have to be flexible and creative. You have to move fast, be prepared - or it quickly becomes costly.

Architects have created this fake separation between creation and execution. You can see it in architecture schools, where the students look down on going to contracts classes.

People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?

I'm an engineer by trade, and what engineers do is they go and build, and they don't think a lot about storytelling.

I was always really geeky about design and buildings. Always into architecture as a kid.

I don't see any difference between architecture and engineering. It's the same profession.

Architecture remains a passion and a subject I'm very interested in. I learned a great deal from studying it and working in it.

The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility.