Frank Gehry Quotes

When I was working in my first job engineering construction, what I liked the most was working with architects and making buildings that had this creative side coming from the architect and that were making them a big success.

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.

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.

When I was in architecture school, I became curious about the exact mathematics, physics, and construction of the great structures I had been studying. I wanted to know how these amazing things would work: the Pantheon, the dome of Michelangelo, the dome of Brunelleschi. So I decided to study civil engineering.

I don't see any difference between architecture and engineering. It's the same profession.

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

If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility. It's not fluff. You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.

You build a player like you build a house. You start with the foundations. The fundamentals.

My father was a master carpenter and builder. Architectural design, engineering design, mechanical design, three-dimensional views, that was my shtick, my forte.

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.

I wanted to be an architect. I used to draw houses and buildings and construct buildings on my own.

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.

I loved problems on paper, and I was good at math, but I was a mechanical engineer, and I never understood - or cared to - how a car worked.

Who is the architect? I am the architect.

Be able to read blueprints, diagrams, floorplans, and other diagrams used in the construction process.

The frightening thought that what you draw may become a building makes for reasoned lines.

It's like when you want to make a house... the technique is very important.

The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.

My brothers were tremendous shack builders. My shacks were horrible. My brothers once built a two-story shack from the ground up that was awesome!

The demands of the time for objectivity and functionality must be fulfilled. If that clearly happens, then the buildings of our day will convey the greatness of which the age is capable, and only a fool will maintain that they lack it.

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

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple.