Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing... and the Gospel according to St. Thomas... was a new thrust like the titanic thrust of Gothic engineering; and its strength was in a God that makes all things new.
The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.
Di bulan April 1978, di Aiglemont, Gouviuex, Prancis sebuah seminar diadakan oleh Aga Khan untuk membahas arsitektur Islam. Banyak pembicaraan menyesali hilangnya "ciri Islam" dalam kota dan bangunan baru di Timur Tengah kini. Hanya seorang ahli sejarah dari Turki, Dogan Kuban, yang memenangkan debat itu dengan mengingatkan, bahwa "arsitektur adalah sebuah profesi yang berorientasi kepada klien". Jika klien yang di Riyadh itu suka gedung model New York, mau apa?
He had been a boy who liked to draw, according to my friend, so he became an architect. Children who drew,I learned, became architects; I had thought they became painters. My friend explained that it was not proper to become a painter; it couldn’t be done. I resigned myself to architecture school and a long life of drawing buildings. It was a pity, for I disliked buildings, considering them only a stiffer and more ample form of clothing, and no more important.
Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Paleolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales...from Ordovician to Devonian, on the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover... An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster...
Martin explains that working with architects in the Arup SoundLab has led to improved collaborations: 'We can relate to architects much better. If we are brought on board at the ideal time, which is if we are brought on board at concept, we can sit with the architect and say...this is what you have to work with. They can hear and they can understand it. Then from their first ideas and concepts they are much more willing to work with us when we talk to them about shape and form.
The [commercial] strip is marketed with the come-on of comfort (the Comfort Inn) and with the promise of a home on the road, a home where nobody knows your name and they're glad to see you as long as you can pay. The strip lives in the contradiction of the name Home Depot—domesticity on a gargantuan scale. Home—"a person's native place," "at ease," "deep; to the heart," says the dictionary, and Depot, "a storehouse or a 'warehouse.'" (Warehouse of the Heart?)
[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.
The house is a normal-sized house, but once you step foot in the door, you are confronted with “The Dome.” Perfectly round, this room is one continuous curved wall of books. A copper dome sits on top with four stained glass windows fitted tight to allow for natural light to stream in. The four stained glass windows offer portraits of the four greatest mathematicians in history: Newton, Euler, Gauss, and Archimedes, though they are ordered alphabetically from left to right on the dome.
I’m relieved to seethat even brilliant physicists make mistakes.”Kohler looked over. “What do you mean?”“Whoever wrote that note made a mistake. That column isn’t Ionic. Ionic columns are uniform in width. That one’s tapered. It’s Doric—the Greek counterpart. A common mistake.”Kohler did not smile. “The author meant it as a joke, Mr. Langdon. Ionic means containing ions—electrically charged particles. Most objects contain them.
Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line, it is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work. What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.
It may well be that what we have hithertounderstood as architecture, and what we arebeginning to understand of technology, areincompatible disciplines. The architect whoproposes to run with technology knows nowthat he will be in fast company, and that inorder to keep up he may have to discard hiswhole cultural load, including the professionalgarments by which he is recognized as anarchitect. If, on the other hand, he decides notto do this, he may find that a technologicalculture has decided to go on without him.
It took Feyra some time to realise that she was not delirious: the citizens were wearing painted masks.From childhood she had heard the legend that the Venetians were half human, half beast.She knew that this could not be true, but in the swirling fog of this hellish city she almost believed it. The creatures seemed to stare at her down their warped noses from their blank and hollow eyes. And overlord of all was the winged lion - he was everywhere, watching from every plaque or pennant, ubiquitous and threatening.
For a brief period of time the American electric-sign industry looked beyond its most immediate market and collaborated with store designers and architects in creating a style which became known as 'stream-line.' Later it became known as 'American Déco.' Whatever it was called or will be called in the future, it represents in terms of neon a thrust away from isolated signage toward an area of architectural ornamentation in which signage is but one element in an overall plan. — Rudi Stern
When friends come to Rome in early summer to visit me I like to take them to the Pantheon during thunderstorms and stand them beneath the opening of the feathery, perfectly proportioned dome as rain falls through the open roof against the marble floor and lightning scissors through the wild and roiled skies. The emperor Hadrian rebuilt the temple to honor gods no longer worshiped, but you can feel the brute passion in that ardor in the Pantheon's grand and harmonious shape. I think gods have rarely been worshiped so well.
