Ada Louise Huxtable Quotes


One of the most basic human instincts is the need to decorate. Nothing is exempt - the body, the objects one uses, from intimate to monumental, and all personal and ceremonial space. It is an instinct that responds ... to some deep inner urge that has been variously described as the horror of a vacuum and the need to put one's imprint on at least one small segment of the world.


Citations

Huxtable, Ada Louise. Kicked a Building Lately? Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1976.

Related Quotes

Ada Louise Huxtable
Ada Louise Huxtable
  • Born: March 14, 1921
  • Died: January 7, 2013
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Critic

Ada Louise Huxtable was an architecture critic and writer on architecture. Huxtable established architecture and urban design journalism in North America and raised the public’s awareness of the urban environment. In 1970 she was awarded the first ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger, also a Pulitzer Prize-winner (1984) for architectural criticism, said in 1996: "Before Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture was not a part of the public dialogue." "She was a great lover of cities, a great preservationist and the central planet around which every other critic revolved," said architect Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale University School of Architecture.