David Chipperfield Quotes

With everything that I design, from a church to a plate to skyscraper to a spoon. I am always thinking about voluptuous volumes and spaces.

All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.

The Coke bottle is a masterpiece of scientific, functional planning. In simpler terms, I would describe the bottle as well thought out, logical, sparing of material and pleasant to look at.

There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple.

Make each product the best it can be. Focus on form and materials. What we don't include is as important as what we do include.

I love everything that Frank Gehry does. I wish I could have that man build me a Wayne Manor-style mansion, like his idea of it.

New synthetic substances - steel, concrete, glass - are actively superseding the traditional raw materials of construction.

The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick; much the greatest proportion being of scantlingand boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable.

I love what you might call brutal elegance. Where form and function are really obvious. There is nothing easily broken in this house.

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.

A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.

I could have been an architect, but I don't think I'd have been very happy. Nearly all modern architecture is a silly game as far as I can see.

When I started studying architecture, people would say, you know, 'Can you tell me why are all modern buildings so boring?' Because, like, people had this idea that in the good old days, architecture had, like, ornament and little towers and spires and gargoyles, and today, it just becomes very practical.

Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can't imagine any other way.

Gothic architecture requires individual craftsmanship. The wish to create an enclosed world for the congregation gives rise in Gothic architecture to the need to create something wherein the activity of the congregation plays a part.

We forget the importance of engineering, but it's been used to design everything from St. Paul's Cathedral to The Shard.

For me, architecture is not just creating a space to protect people but to make them dream as well.

Does anyone recall hippies designing things for Generation X? Does anyone recall the elegance of that? How design was about making things simpler?

I love a good monochromatic moment with doors/walls. I think it looks great!

Boat building is intellectual - everything has a reason. In sculpture, it has a direction.

Beauty is not generic, bland, and clinical. It isn't all things to all people. The Cathedral of Notre Dame in its endlessly intricate detail was beautiful. Modern office buildings are not.

Balenciaga taught me everything I know. He taught me to care for the details, that it was not necessary to sew on a button where it had no use or to add a flower to make a dress beautiful... no unnecessary detail.

I don't like a lot of feathers and frills. I like a clean aesthetic, a Calvin Klein aesthetic.

Spare functional furniture, in my opinion, is the genius of 20th-century design.

Simplicity is key. Some people like really high-tech kitchens, where you have warming drawers and ice makers and storage for a million different things. Honestly, for me, I need an oven, a stove top, a fridge and a sink.