Harry Bertoia Quotes

We always correct people who say, 'You're trying to make this look better.' Well yes, we want it to look better, but that's easy. The look and the function are one and the same. They are not separate. It looks good because it functions beautifully. That message is very hard.

Of all human foibles love of living is the most powerful.

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.

My mantra is: 'Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas.'

Stockholm is surely an urban planner's dream. Everything works. Everything looks good.

All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.

Good design doesn't date. Bad design does.

Good design doesn't date.

Perhaps believing in good design is like believing in God, it makes you an optimist.

I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would really like one. Making sure a shaving mirror in a hotel bathroom is at the right angle. Making bureaucratic buildings that are somehow cheerful.

Design is about creating spaces for people to enjoy and of course, creating moments where you elevate the spirit, but 'design for good' is figuring out a program that not only creates better spaces, but creates jobs, creates new industry and really kind of raises the conversation about how we rebuild.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.

Porsche's and Apple's design philosophies are similar. Much like the 356, the original iPhone was about defining a foundation for the future.

I don't have a death wish. On the contrary, I'm hanging onto my life like never before.

Forming communities - even and especially ones based on strong loyalties and allegiances - is in our DNA. It's what's kept us alive for millions of years.

Empires fall, ids explode, great symphonies are written, and behind all of it is a single instinct that demands satisfaction.

Picasso said that no one has to explain a daffodil. Good design is understandable to virtually everybody. You never have to ask why.

True, man cannot escape death. But for the present he is alive; and life, not death, takes hold of him... It is mans innate nature that he seeks to preserve and to strengthen his life, that he is discontented and aims at removing uneasiness, that he is in search of what may be called happiness.

A good design is not a democratic consensus.

The human instinct for self-preservation is strong. I know, because mine pulls at me, too, like the needle on a compass. And everybody - I've been reading some philosophy - everybody seems to agree that the instinct and responsibility of all humans is to take care of themselves first. You have the right to self-defense. You have the right to survive, if you can.

What I love about design is the artistic and scientific complexity that also becomes useful . . . Great designers also pursue a mission. Great designers design with mankind in mind . . . The crossroads of science and art, innovation and inspiration are what I love about design.

I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.