Greg Lynn Quotes

Working off one genius sketch is not the way great architecture should be made.

In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.

I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.

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.

Architecture is not about building the impossible, which we can do if we have enough money and enough tools and enough computers. It is about building what is appropriate and about attaining beauty through such an approach. I describe this premise as 'inherent buildability', and I believe it is central to what I do.

All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial.

I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age.

When drawings of the main buildings I have designed in the last five years are juxtaposed, the fact that they all involve the pursuit of certain configurations is obvious to anyone.

Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.

All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.

Building design isn't trendy.

Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long.

I don't particularly follow the Bauhaus school of design, where you make everything into a black box - simplify it.

But now I know that it is very important that all buildings should be consistent, that this is the quality of the Gothic cathedral, for instance, that we like.

I studied to be an architect. And I find tremendous similarities between building a company and the design process. Businesses have to do their planning on the fly in a fashion similar to an architect sketching.

I don't build because I am an architect. I can make true architecture because I do not build.

The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living.

Architecture is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that's all.

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

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.

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.

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.

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.

As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall. You must love music. This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music - making a space for art is the same thing.

Every one of my buildings begins with an Italian journey.