Antoni Gaudi Quotes

Right angles don't attract me. Nor straight, hard and inflexible lines created by man.

Straight lines don't exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms have at least a slight curve.

Architecture theory is very interesting.

Concrete you can mold, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.

There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.

There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape.

Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.

So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal.

For architecture, nature provides only indications and analogies, not models to imitate.

I’m interested in natural growth patterns, and the beautiful forms that only nature creates. How that flows through me and how that comes out is what I’m trying to understand.

I have always been very interested in landscape... I find that all natural forms are a source of unending interest - tree trunks, the growth of branches from the trunk, each finding its own individual air-space.

The whole of nature is an endless demonstration of shape and form. It always surprises me when artists try to escape from this.

For me, architecture is an art the same as painting is an art or sculpture is an art. Yet, architecture moves a step beyond painting and sculpture because it is more than using materials. Architecture responds to functional outputs and environmental factors. Yet, fundamentally, it is important for me to stress the art in architecture to bring harmony.

In order to design buildings with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction.

Architecture is not about form

I think the biggest problem with 'industrial' architecture is that it's lost its sense of humanity. Minimalist stuff drains all the humanity out of it. That idea works great for the money thing, but it doesn't work great for the feeling thing.

The responsibility of an architect is to create a sense of order, a sense of place, a sense of relationship.

The relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of their masses than any other tribute of their design.

Frank Gehry for instance likes to imagine his buildings as sculptures. I like to imagine my sculptures as architectural.

Buildings are seldom just buildings in downtown Chicago, they are Examples, and not a city on Earth, I swear, is as knowledgeably preoccupied with architectural meaning. Where else would a department store include in its advertisements the name of the architect who created it, or a newspaper property section throw in a scholarly exposition of theoretical design?

But where do they find these lines in nature? I can only see luminous or obscure masses, planes that advance or planes that recede, reliefs or background. My eye never catches lines or details.

To sum up the state of architecture in America: ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.

Inventive man has invented nothing -- nothing from scratch. If he has produced a machine that in motion overcomes the law of gravity, he learned the essentials from the observation of birds.