Architecture Criticism Quotes

When I was in architecture school at Princeton, the worst thing you could say about someone was that they were eclectic.

I taught at Princeton for 39 years, and the school of architecture on the campus is the worst building on the campus.

Almost every time I make a building, some people will condemn it straight to Hell.

Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts), when the infamous Pruitt Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite.

Behold the Drojim Palace," King Urgit said extravagantly to Sadi, "the hereditary home of the House of Urga." "A most unusual structure, You Majesty," Sadi murmured. "That's a diplomatic way to put it." Urgit looked critically at his palace. "It's gaudy, ugly, and in terribly bad taste. It does, however, suit my personality almost perfectly.

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.

The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture.

The bias among architecture critics isn't against skyscrapers per se, but against the way in which their design is so heavily dictated by economic considerations - the way in which skyscrapers are real estate before they are architecture.

Architecture has curled up in a ball and it's about itself. It has found itself either as a freakshow, where you're not sure if it's good or bad but at least it's interesting, or at the behest of forces of commerce.