Architectural Heritage Quotes

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

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.

It's a shame about California, and particularly about L.A., where they've demolished so many landmarks. It's a bit of a disease there, where if anything is over 30 years old, they sort of knock it down and replace it. It's a strange town, it's this sprawling suburb, and then there's a city, the old town.

Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind--no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be--there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

From Brighton to Bradford, from Suffolk to Somerset, I have explored some remarkable buildings and structures that, in different ways, have helped to shed light on the way modern Britain has developed.

Norfolk would not be Norfolk without a church tower on the horizon or round a corner up a lane. We cannot spare a single Norfolk church. When a church has been pulled down the country seems empty or is like a necklace with a jewel missing.

I would say that to put architecture in the chain of history, to be able to interpret and understand why we are where we are, is quite crucial.

Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed

I wanted to disconnect from contemporary architecture

The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't changed. So memory is very available to me as I walk around.

We are the only country in the world that trashes its old buildings. Too late we realize how very much we need them.

I come from a long line of architects. I'm the only one who did not become an architect, but I've been around the drawing aspect and construction my whole life.

I absolutely fell in love with Moscow. It's one of those places where you can't help but trip over history at every turn. It's a city of enormous contradictions. Within a few yards of Lenin's Tomb is some of the most expensive shopping in the world.

An old building is like a show. You smell the soul of a building. And the building tells you how to redo it.

Old houses, I thought, do not belong to people ever, not really, people belong to them.

Two of my theatres are 1930s and the other five are by Sprague, the greatest Edwardian architect of the lot. They've needed a lot of work doing to them but they were built very well.

It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.

Everywhere in the world, when you travel, you see structures that stand out. Historic structures and new structures. But in India, I don't see anything that stands out.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is for the community of San Francisco. And the Brooklyn Bridge, which is one of the most magnificent bridges ever built, is also a monument to the community, you see.

It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs.

Europe is, perhaps, the least worn-out of the continents, because it is the most lived in. A place that is lived in lives.

My special situation was that I was the son and grandson of architects. And so I saw building. We were building the city, and that was exciting.

In the '60s when I was a student, there was this campaign to destroy 75 percent of the old buildings in Paris, replacing them with modern architecture. I realized this as a dangerous utopia. This modern vision did not understand the richness of the city. Thankfully, such destruction did not happen.