Oscar Niemeyer Quotes

Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It's based on wonder.

To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.

The demands of the time for objectivity and functionality must be fulfilled. If that clearly happens, then the buildings of our day will convey the greatness of which the age is capable, and only a fool will maintain that they lack it.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.

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

I love creative people.

If architecture had nothing to do with art, it would be astonishingly easy to build houses, but the architect's task - his most difficult task - is always that of selecting.

Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.

You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you, 'I like an arch.' And you say to brick, 'Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.' And then you say: 'What do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: 'I like an arch.'

A building is hard to judge. It takes many years to find out whether it works. It's not as simple as asking the people in the office whether they like it.

We refuse to recognize problems of form, but only problems of building. Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result. Form, by itself, does not exist. Form as an aim is formalism; and that we reject.

The frightening thought that what you draw may become a building makes for reasoned lines.

It's like when you want to make a house... the technique is very important.

I think there is a new awareness in this 21st century that design is as important to where and how we live as it is for museums, concert halls and civic buildings.

The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.

Frank Lloyd Wright made houses right up until the end. I think that's important because it gives you a direct connection to all the basic aspects of architecture - the spatial energy of the place, the construction, the materials, the site, the detail.

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.

It must be understood that every architecture is bound to its time and manifests itself only in vital tasks and through the materials of its age. It has never been otherwise.

A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.

Architecture is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that's all.

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.

Architecture is about aging well, about precision and authenticity. There is much more to the success of a building than what you can see. I'm not suggesting that gestural architecture is always superficial, but solid reasoning has its place.

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.

I don't usually go in for reviews of buildings that aren't yet built, since you can tell only so much from drawings and plans, and, besides, has there ever been a building that didn't look great as a model?