Contextual Design Quotes

I think you need to, as an architect, understand the essence of a place and create a building that feels like it resonates with the culture of a place. So my buildings in India or in Kansas City or in Arkansas or in Singapore, they come out different because the places are so different.

Before 2000, everything was about being contextual, and buildings were supposed to be good citizens.

Everything we design is a response to the specific climate and culture of a particular place.

I realize that having a style would be very beneficial for my practice from a marketing standpoint, but I can't do it. I believe my responsibilities as an architect are to design the most appropriate building for the place. Each place has a distinct culture and function, which for me requires an appropriate answer.

As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.

I think as designers we realize design is a signal of intention, but it also has to occur within a world and we have to understand that world in order to imbue our designs with inherent intelligence.

It is not possible to design always the same. How to be different in each different place - that is the most important work and duty of the architect to find out.

Architecture must not do violence to space or its neighbors.

I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.

A truly great structure, one that is meant to stand the tests of time, never disregards its environment. A serious architect takes that into account. He knows that if he wants presence, he must consult with nature.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture seeks to make a better place in physical terms. This means trying to bring values into environments, buildings, and contexts that improve the quality of life for future generations.

Architecture is bound to situation. And I feel like the site is a metaphysical link, a poetic link, to what a building can be.

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.

Architects in the past have tended to concentrate their attention on the building as a static object. I believe dynamics are more important: the dynamics of people, their interaction with spaces and environmental condition.

You cannot simply put something new into a place. You have to absorb what you see around you, what exists on the land, and then use that knowledge along with contemporary thinking to interpret what you see.

You can never design the best city, but you can design the best city you know how to design at this time.

One of the stated goals of the postmodern movement in architecture was a greater sensitivity to the people who live in or use newly designed buildings.

We try to respond as closely as we can to the nature of each city, to the traditions, to their expectations. I don't believe that architects should be imposing their style or their plans on every city in the world.

My first impression of Beverly Hills was that it had a landscape of small houses built by famous architects, so I didn't want to make a big block or sculpture here; I wanted to make a community rooted to the place.

As many an architect will tell you, human behavior changes according to the environment.

I always tend to think, even in residential projects, about what a space is being asked to do - where is it located, what are the circumstances, where can I attack the problem, so to speak. How can you create a narrative for people moving through it? How can you convey its character?

Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times.

I always think of buildings in their settings, but so do other architects.

For me, I think the most exciting thing in architecture is the re-emergence of the locally-focused architect.

We have to base architecture on the environment.