Lawrence Halprin Quotes

I think the art fair is very much a form of urbanism. I think something really happens to the cities when such a fair happens. The city becomes an exhibition; it's amazing.

Without a shadow of doubt, Trafalgar Square has to be one of the most crap urban public spaces in the world.

That is the effect of my sculptures in the public domain: people are making contact with each other again.

I'd lived by quotations, practically all my life.

I'd been doing projects outdoors for the public. I made pigeons eat geometry by putting bread out in rhomboids and triangles. I don't know if this activity made sense, but the work was available.

I'm of the opinion that it's okay to be silent, to not speak if you don't have anything to say.

For 11 years, I was mayor of Tirana, our capital. We faced many challenges. Art was part of the answer, and my name, in the very beginning, was linked with two things: demolition of illegal constructions in order to get public space back, and use of colors in order to revive the hope that had been lost in my city.

How do you design it so that people can form a space of their own, and feel quiet and contemplative?

If you give me Times Square, I want to give it back to the people.

I believe in the city as a natural human environment, but we must humanize it. It's art that will re-define public space in the 21st Century. We can make our cities diverse, inspirational places by putting art, dance and performance in all its forms into the matrix of street life.

The idea is to bring art to people who might never really interact with it. It's for all citizens, and it's about making the city more interesting and more visually significant.

I suppose illustration tends to live in the streets, rather than in the hermetically sealed atmosphere of the museum, and consequently it has come to be taken less seriously.

I have a Manhattan club chair in dark espresso leather that I always read in. It's a place where I can contemplate other people's thoughts and stir my imagination.

Confederate statues belong in a historical museum, not in a place of honor.

My attitude is, a monument, a statue, ought to signify unity instead of division.

The art that I do is for the people. It is about engaging a new audience who wouldn't necessarily go to art galleries and museums and painting on the street is the best way to do that.

The best art is on the street.

Street artists want to add something to the environment. They consider the audience, whereas graffiti writers don't care about anyone except themselves, they do it purely for the kick.

Public art is a unique type of art. It's very different to gallery art because it is something that we pass by every day and it inevitably creates a lot of discussion in a way that gallery art does not.

At some point early on, I realized that three of the greatest speeches ever delivered were by Winston Churchill, and they were written and delivered within a four-week period of each other.

The architect aspires to build in a city as the artist aspires to exhibit his works in a museum.

For the first project I did in North America, I was asked as an artist, not as an architect, to collaborate on a big development in the heart of Toronto. I was working with other artists and was in charge of giving form to a street, and I proposed a galleria.

For me, it's mostly about having stuff on the street. You're walking down the street, you do it every day, and suddenly there's something that wasn't there yesterday: something bright and cheerful and different. It might stay there for a year; maybe it will disappear.

As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work.

My idea is to fill an intersection with color. That will include the road and the sidewalk and up the building, so there's a cubic volume of color in the intersection wedged between four corners and four buildings.