quotes - history midterm 26

“The grain elevators of Canada and South America ... are almost as impressive in their monumental power as the buildings of ancient Egypt.”

Walter Gropius

not only a ‘man of letters’ but a man of the media.”

Le Corbu

Volume and surface are the elements by which architecture manifests itself.

Volume and surface are determined by the plan. The plan is the generator.”

Gropius

“Architecture is a well stated problem.”

Corbu

“.. everything here is resolved in accordance with an unsurpassable formula..”

Corbu

“Nothing is transmissible but thought.”

Corbu

“Une maison est une machine-a-habiter.”

[A house is a machine for living in]

Corbu

“... Things will endure less than us.

Every generation must build its

own city.

ANTONIO SANT ELIA

the Futurist house

must be like a gigantic

machine.

Anotnio sant elia

Art consists in the conception before anything else. Technique

is only a tool, humbly at the service of the conception.

Corbu

A new term has replaced the old word furniture…The new term is equipment,

Corbu

“Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in

creative art.

Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, … it wants to

have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes

that it can exist, in and for itself, without ‘things’.”

Kasimir Malevitch

“The great modern architects have known how to achieve interest in their

compositions while exercising a truly classic restraint.”

corbu

Architectural (construction) detail,

which is required

as much by modern structure as by the

structure of the past, provides the

decoration of contemporary

architecture.”

corbu

“For every family its own

house, for every house its

own orchard and garden.”

Soria y Mata

we are witnessing the birth of the linear city… which

moves around waterways, roadways, railways… along

this linear industrial city there shall be dwelling places,

building proportionate in size…

corbu

my only political intervention in fifty years…

the open hand: open to receive and to give…

to open the doors to human sentiments of generosity…”

corbu

“Architecture belongs to the epoch, not

just to its time… to the very essence of

an epoch, which is the only thing that

architecture can truly express…

MIES

we need a grammar in

architecture...

With it, if you are good, you can make

good prose, and if you are very good,

you can make poetry…”

MIES

“Less is more”

peter behrens

“Under Suprematism … art …

wants to have nothing further to do

with the object, as such, and

believes that it can exist, in and for

itself, without ‘things’.”

kasimir malevitch

“True education is concerned not only with practical goals but also with values.

Our aims assure us of our material life, our values make possible our spiritual life.”

mies

only a single goal: to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time.” [

Mies

“God is in the details.

Mies

the goal is perfection.”

mies

“I refuse to invent a new architecture every Monday morning.

It took the Greeks centuries to perfect the Doric column

and perfection is the ultimate concern.”

mies

I’m not a reformer. I don’t

want to change the world.

I want to express it.”

mies

“Architecture is the will

of an epoch translated

into space.

mies

After that violent interruption.. every thinking man felt the necessity for an intellectual

change of front. …

It was then that the immensity of the mission of the architects of my own generation first

dawned on me. I saw that architects cannot hope to realize their ideas unless they can

influence the industry of his country sufficiently for a new school of design to arise as a

result…”

Gropius

Architects, painters, and sculptors

must recognize anew and learn to

grasp the composite character

of a building both as

an entity and in its separate parts.

Only then will their

work be imbued

with the architectonic spirit which it

has lost

as ‘salon art.

Gropius

“A modern, harmonic and lively

architecture is the visible sign of an

authentic democracy.”

Mies

don’t write, I build.”

alvar alto

We can say that one of the ways to arrive at a more and more humanely

built environment is to expand the concept of the Rational….

As soon as we include psychological requirements, or, let us say, when we

can do so, then we will have already expanded the rational

[Gropius’/Modern] method to an extent that has the potential of excluding

inhuman results…

alto

“Architecture must have charm; it is a factor of beauty in society… [But

beauty] is the result of harmony between several intrinsic factors,

not the least the social.

alto

“Technical functionalism is correct only if enlarged to cover even the

psychophysical field. That is the only way to humanize architecture. …

It is not the rationalization itself that was wrong in the first, now past, period

of Modern Architecture. The wrongness lies in the fact that the

rationalization has not gone deep enough.”

Alto

There are only two things in art – humanity or its lack.

The mere form, or some detail in itself, does not create humanity....

It does not matter how much electric cables or the wheels of motorcars

are standardized, when it comes to the home, to the things that are close

to us, the problem is different – it becomes a question of the spirit…”

aalto

We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city like an immense

and tumultuous shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic in every

detail; and the Futurist [apartment] house must be like a

gigantic machine. The lifts must no longer be hidden away …

[and they] must scale the lengths of the façades like serpents of

steel and glass.”

Antonio Sant Elia