Norman Foster Quotes

Architecture is a negotiated art, and it's highly political, and if you want to make buildings, there is diplomacy required.

I think there is a new awareness in this 21st century that design is as important to where and how we live as it is for museums, concert halls and civic buildings.

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.

If a building becomes architecture, then it is art.

Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves.

Architecture is a political art connecting our values to the ages.

Personally, one of the greatest sources of inspiration for my work has been architecture. I've had the chance to see so many exquisite structures, whether they are historical monuments or modern commercial premises.

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow.

I am very interested in architecture. I've been asked if I'd ever direct, but me, I'd rather build. It's very similar to directing, because you get to walk among this piece of art, to live in it, be surrounded by it, which is just thrilling.

In Lagos there's a really strong case to resurrect strong parts. Embedded in all of it are some amazing pieces of planning, amazing pieces of engineering and interaction. For instance, the campus of Lagos University is stunningly beautiful, efficient and generous, and that needs to be recognised and preserved.

Berlin is liberation. Architecture, man!

I've always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.

To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.

Architecture aims at Eternity.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

Mathematics is one of the essential emanations of the human spirit, a thing to be valued in and for itself, like art or poetry.

The advancement and perfection of mathematics are intimately connected with the prosperity of the State.

Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed.

Mathematicians deal with intellectual concepts which they follow out for their own sake. But they stimulate scientists, philosophers, economists, poets, musicians though without being at all conscious of any need or responsibility to do so.

To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country.

Inside the intelligentsia, the pressure of public opinion is overwhelming. Nationalistic loyalty towards the proletariat, and most vicious theoretical hatred of the bourgeoisie, can and often do co-exist with ordinary snobbishness in everyday life.

My private work is touched by this destiny of understanding that architecture and engineering have a social character and can serve the community.

I don't know if it's genetic or just because I was surrounded by it, but I was always fascinated with building and construction and development.