Troy Dumais Quotes

The building's identity resided in the ornament.

When I concentrate on a specific site or place for which I am going to design a building, I try to plumb its depths, its form, its history and its sensuous qualities.

An important work of architecture will create polemics.

I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one.

Visual presentation of our heritage in glass is needed.

A country, a style or an epoch are interesting only for the idea behind them.

Any set of decisions about design is inevitably influenced by cultural prejudice, no matter how intent an architect might be to avoid it.

If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced.

I am so excited to have created a line that has been inspired by my culture - showing its color, its passion and its greatness - and one that captures much of my personal style.

Each time you see a Western movie, it's a good reflection of where things are in the world at that time. It's probably one of the purest forms of cinema that really tells you where the world is.

Vogue has always loved the design and structure of bridges and she loves Albert Bridge, which we live right next to.

All leading brands started with and still possess the DNA of innovation and creativity, but it is often limited to one or two areas such as design or engineering. For a company to prosper, it must inject this innovative spirit into every aspect of the business.

In China, we had some buildings that looked like the White House or wine bottles. All they seemed to represent was bad taste.

Art in America should be American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement.

People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That's the rhetorical position we occupy.

Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture.'

One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again.

Architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart. Creative work is expressed in our time as a union of technology and humanity.

To build means to make architecture real on the borders of knowledge.

It is new design by architects versus world revolution by political leadership.

I saw a commercial for an above-ground pool, it was 30 seconds long. Because that's the maximum amount of time you can picture yourself having fun in an above-ground pool. If it was 31 seconds, the actor would say "The water is only up to here? What do I do now? Throw the ball back to Jimmy? Or put some goggles on and look at his feet?"

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

Architects cannot teach nature anything.

You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty.

Contentment: The smother of invention.