Toyo Ito Quotes

I object to the hegemony of form in contemporary architecture. We have very advanced technological tools, but ultimately, we create buildings exactly like we used to before: We send the drawings to an engineer and let him struggle with figuring out how to build it.

With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects - the building is there to be used, and times change.

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 am interested in classic building development, such as hotels and residential homes, rather than commercial properties.

Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.

Nothing requires the architect's care more than the due proportions of buildings.

The architect, Peter Arens who is the monstrous carbuncle architect, not merely did his design which had won a public competition never get built but his practice suffered financially for some years.

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.

Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house.

I wanted a real profession. And I'd always been interested in architecture and in design and in, really, what makes things work. And understanding what's kind of behind the walls and why things stand up and some things don't.

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.

Before the professionalization of architecture in the nineteenth century, it was standard for an aspiring mason or carpenter to begin his apprenticeship at fourteen and to become a master builder by his early twenties.

I haven't done any building designs since the Loaf House.

Architecture is a service business. An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that.

Clothes if they are not well cut, you can kill nobody. A building poorly built can kill people. It's a much more difficult work. I would not compare myself with that.

I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?

I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.

I think architects are often at their best when faced with restraints.

Supply and demand regulate architectural form.

Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.

The technology of the time dictated the way things looked.

There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff.

I don't see that any buildings should be excluded from the term architecture, as long as they are done properly.

There can be little question that the tall building presents one of the most difficult challenges to the architect.

To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.