QUOTES ABOUT ARCHITECTURE
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Painting is art that can be looked at; sculpture is an art that can be walked around; architecture is an art that you can walk through. Dan Rice.
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Architecture is music in space, as if frozen music. Friedrich Schelling.
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Architecture is the alphabet of giants, the greatest system of visible symbols ever created. Gilbert Chesterton.
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Fashion, like architecture, is a matter of proportions. Coco Chanel.
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Architecture is an art that affects people most slowly, but most lastingly. Louis Henry Sullivan.
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A house is a machine for living. Charles Le Corbusier.
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Buildings should be good neighbors for people. Paul Tyree.
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A fashionable building will lose its youth and become obsolete in ten years. It will become less unpleasant to the eye in two hundred years, when fashion has been forgotten. Stendhal.
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An architect is someone who knows the difference between what can be done and what should be done. Larry McVoy.
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Before you build anything, listen to the city; before you demolish anything, listen to your heart. Norman Foster.
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If architecture is frozen music, then our buildings are a dog waltz. Gennady Malkin.
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Architecture distributes masses and volumes. Inspiration transforms inert stone into drama. Le Corbusier.
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The architect who knows how to combine beauty with convenience for living deserves the greatest praise. Lorenzo Bernini.
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A building can become and remain beautiful even without decoration due to its proportions alone. Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
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Art is, in essence, science; this is what we should see in architecture. Etienne Louis Boulet.
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A good architect must have a good understanding of verbal science and history, be able to draw and know mathematics, stone cutting and perspective; but this is not enough, he must be an honest, reasonable and judicious person; must have liveliness and taste in his considerations; Without these qualities he cannot be either a perfect architect or a useful person to society. Vasily Ivanovich Bazhenov.
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Architecture is also a chronicle of the world: it speaks when both songs and legends are already silent. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.
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Architecture is an exponent of morals. Honore de Balzac.
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The architectural appearance of a building, which evokes in us a feeling corresponding to its purpose, is style. Stendhal.
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An architect-urban planner is called upon to create the best living conditions not only for contemporaries, but also for future generations. Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky.
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When I come to Paris, I only dine at the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower. This is the only place from where this monstrous structure is not visible. William Morris.
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The pharaohs advertised themselves with the help of pyramids. Ramon Gomez de la Serna.
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If these old walls could talk, what bores they would be! Robert Benchley
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A city where you are unlucky always seems uninteresting in architecture. Emil Krotky.
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An architect builds taking into account not only the principles of convenience. The structure must be impressive in its beauty and absolutely harmonious. Harmony is what underlies all forms of art throughout human history. Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky.
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An architect, creating comfortable, beautiful and well-appointed cities for the people, is first of all a servant of the people, devoting all his strength, all his abilities, his whole life to caring for people. Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky.
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Perhaps the most difficult and at the same time mandatory thing in architecture is simplicity. The simplicity of the forms obliges us to give them excellent proportions and relationships that would impart the necessary harmony. Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev.
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Every great architect is necessarily a great poet. He must be a great, original interpreter of his time. Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Architecture should always be sculptural, and sculpture architectural. Emile Antoine Bourlelle.
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All the great architects of the past were at one time modern architects, and the constant striving forward, the thirst for modernity are characteristic of all great masters of art. The great truth of the architectural tradition, which at the same time testifies to a truly attentive attitude to the past, is that tradition should lead forward, not backward. If it were otherwise, humanity would continue to live today in caves of the prehistoric era. Francis Jourdain.
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If architects limited themselves to strengthening ancient monuments, and not remodeling them, they would deserve the gratitude of all who value our past and our historical monuments. Anatole France.
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The architecture of large pyramid temples is silent mathematics. Oswald Spengler.
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We will never understand the gigantic architecture of cathedrals and pyramids if we do not recognize them as the sacrifice that a young soul makes to alien forces. Oswald Spengler.
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A doctor can bury his mistake, an architect can only cover the walls with ivy. Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Murderers and architects always return to the scene of the crime. Peter Ustinov.
Important statements by architect Sergei Skuratov
About architecture and architects
Architecture is born from an attraction to a place—your attraction.
It can be different: warm, cold, passionate, hidden - but attraction. You need to find the correct configuration of this place. This is what architecture is born from. You need to understand that there is actually only one solution - in the metaphysical sense. In a way, this place already knows what it should look like. Humanity is tired of luxury. And this period of fatigue can be seen as an attempt to get to the bottom of things. The truth is in simplicity. The essence of architecture is to convey the “warmth” of the creator to people. “Warmth” is realized through harmony. Harmony is realized through the line. A line is a boundary. The latter divides spaces, planes, materials, light, shadow, etc. Modern architecture has deprived itself of decorations because they are not needed. Details - yes, they are necessary for a person in order to adapt, to find his scale in space. Plus, the parts perform purely utilitarian functions. Moving away from decoration is a normal trend, but this is not naked functionalism. Besides it, there are many other directions. For example, modern sensual minimalism, expressionism, deconstructivism, geomorphism, bionics.
Skyscrapers are a powerful gesture, an act of will, if you will. An act dictated by the idea of progress, when society reaches a high degree of technical and financial development, and demonstrating its uniqueness and achievements becomes an important goal. And power over nature as well. There are no skyscrapers in nature. There are mountains and rocks that cannot be repeated. Emotionally, skyscrapers are ambition in its purest form. The fact that the construction of skyscrapers has spread throughout Russia is some kind of fashionable disease, like acne on a teenager’s face, a consequence of irregular and uneven growth. The sooner this goes away, the better.
Previous NextAbout the dialogue between history and modernity
Never in the 17th century were they built to resemble the 15th century; each era left its mark. To leave traces in the 21st century that imitate the 18th and 19th centuries, in my opinion, is simply indecent in relation to the global cultural process. In this sense, I am a principled modernist.
Contemporary architecture can be a strong and worthy interlocutor in a dialogue with historical architecture. She just has to be smart and delicate to do this. Because historical architecture is like your mother, it is dear to you, you love it, but this does not mean that you should copy it in everything. The new inside the old is inevitable, you just have to look for the exact form.
Architecture is a momentary snapshot of society, fashion, and deep social processes. It is important that people can attribute each building to a specific historical period. I told my first customers: “Do you want a house with columns and lions? Then start with yourself: a frock coat, a carriage, a toilet in the yard.” But they want a water closet and a Bentley. But they want to sell a house with columns because it costs more.
Previous NextAbout architects in Russia
In Russia, architecture has never been a national treasure, an object of worship, as, for example, in Italy. The consequence of this is a situation in which architects never became national heroes. Now in France there is Jean Nouvel, in England - Sir Norman Foster, in Holland - Rem Koolhaas, in America - Frank Geary and Richard Meier. All of these, mind you, are developed countries. And we have? Do you remember the film “Andrei Rublev”, where, after completing the work, the clients gouged out the eyes of the architects and artists out of jealousy so that they wouldn’t build something similar elsewhere?
A good architect in Russia is a fighter. To build a house, you need to be Ilya Muromets or Stepan Razin, at a minimum. After all, the biggest problem is not to draw a house, but to build it. They can still draw a house here, make working documentation - it’s already more difficult, selecting designers and engineers is even more difficult, building a house and bringing the project to completion is the most difficult thing.
It is difficult for foreign architects to penetrate our space. Because they don’t live here, they don’t really care about our problems. What even the most talented foreigners do looks like postcards, like superficial impressions. Their extravagance and innovative designs cause a stir, but a Western thing taken out of context cannot exist in Russia. To do this, you must first change the entire Russian society. Because tomorrow Uncle Vasya will come with a screwdriver to fix your house, built for a billion dollars. And then that's it, it's over. Your smart home will no longer be smart.
Previous NextAbout myself
My architectural taste must have already been formed and preserved.
I am surprised by increasingly simple and laconic things. I like the idea that you need to achieve maximum results with a minimum amount of funds.
Oddly enough, I don’t really like Russian constructivism. For me, he’s a bit too worker-peasant, or something. Some kind of all ranked. They invented a new form for general use. But I don’t need her, I can’t stand “like everyone else.” I don’t even want to breathe, like everyone else.
I really like old fortresses; Romanesque castles with huge blocks of walls and towers; Pskov-Novgorod architecture, curved, with corner windows; old brick houses in Scotland; Finn Aalto with his copper; Chapel in Ronchamp by Corbusier, I’m just going crazy about it. It has everything - Pskov, and Rome, and Romanesque cathedrals, there are so many metamorphoses in it... I adore the Italians: Siena, San Gimignano, Assisi, Urbino.
I really love spaces with dialogues of textures:
I love brick, it has the nature of mixed clay, unevenness, multi-coloredness; I love burnt metal, in which blue appears through the rust; I love copper with patina. Conciseness, purity of solution, energy of architectural gesture - the values that came to us from modernism are very strong in me. I can’t do dry, minimalistic things: I’m bored.
I love Michelangelo's "Slaves"
, because there is more hidden in their incompleteness than in the finished product...
I'm probably a terribly vain person.
When you see how the scaffolding is removed from a house... I cannot compare any human pleasure with this.
Photo by Sergei Skuratov for the announcement of the article: savransky.livejournal.com
Architectural wonders from around the world - 30 masterpieces
The buildings are considered to be some of the most impressive works of art. After spending untold sums on construction, you can walk through the completed projects and even live inside. Insider has collected 30 buildings that will blow your mind.
The oldest surviving building on Earth is Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. Its age is estimated at at least the ninth millennium BC. Archaeologists are unsure of the purpose of Göbekli Tepe. Most likely, the building had religious significance.
Since then, humanity has managed to build many cool structures. For example, just last year the futuristic Fulton Center opened in New York...
...and Penlee and Essendon Grammar School in Melbourne, Australia.
The amazing Golden Temple in Amritsar, India appears to have risen straight from the waters of the Amritsar River.
At night, the Sikh religious center looks absolutely stunning.
The Las Lajas Church in Nariño, Colombia is puzzling at first because the structure seems to defy gravity.
Modernist architect Antonio Gaudi did not live to see the completion of the Sagrada Familia - in fact, its construction continues to this day. From the outside, the temple resembles houses from The Chronicles of Narnia...
...and its interior decoration is even more surreal.
The Flatiron Building was one of New York's first skyscrapers...
...like the Woolworth Building, the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1930.
In Onomichi, Japan, young couples often have their wedding ceremonies at the Ribbon Chapel.
In Seoul, surrounded by greenery, stands the Light of Life Church.
It looks completely different inside.
The design of the Marina City skyscrapers in Chicago is unique, to say the least. Built in 1964, they were one of the first mixed-use buildings. For the first time in the USA, a high-rise crane was used in construction.
But not all buildings aim for the sky. Temppeliaukio Church, Helsinki, Finland, is carved into the rock underground and receives plenty of sunlight.
The Church of St. George in Lalibela, Ethiopia, was carved from a single boulder in the 12th century.
Some of the most beautiful buildings are part of the landscape. Turninn in Reykjavik reflects the wild beauty of Iceland.
Modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe used edges and open space to create masterpieces that appear to float in the air, like the New National Gallery in Berlin, built in the 1960s.
Berlin is also home to the mecca of electronic music, the brutal nightclub Berghain.
Unity with the environment is one of the oldest concepts in architecture. The ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto is home to the spectacular Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji)…
...and no less stunning Silver.
The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali is the largest mud structure in the world. It can accommodate 3 thousand believers.
The whimsical Pompidou Center in Paris is a masterpiece of postmodernism.
Built around 1200, Chartres Cathedral in northern France is an excellent example of Gothic architecture. Pay attention to the richly decorated “portals” leading into the building...
...and an amazing organ inside.
Perhaps the only religious building that can compare with it in grandeur is the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Its construction was completed at the beginning of the 17th century and coincided with the heyday of the Ottoman Empire.
More than 20 thousand handmade tiles are used in interior decoration.
Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria is believed to have inspired Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle.
Trinity College is the crown jewel of the University of Dublin.
It is famous for its library, the most stunning room of which has the characteristic name “The Long Room”.
The Imperial Palace - also known as the Forbidden City - is the highest form of Chinese architecture.
Between 1420 and 1912 the palace served as the seat of government.
Its interior is truly impressive...
...as well as attention to detail.
Today, the most exotic examples of modern architecture can be seen in Beijing. For example, the CCTV Tower, also known as "Pants".
With the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the late Zaha Hadid did what only she could do—turned the hard, clean lines of modernism into something organic.
High in the Peruvian Andes, Machu Picchu is the finest example of Inca architecture.
Archaeologists believe that the city was built around 1450.
A more detailed photograph of the residential area.
In 2007, Parque Biblioteca España opened in Medellin, Colombia. Its design was designed by Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti. The three buildings should look like stones.
The library, located in Santo Domingo's Savio district, overlooks Medellin itself, lying in a valley surrounded by the Andes.
The Sydney Opera House is rightfully considered an iconic representative of Australian architecture.
Designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon and opened in 1973, the theater became a literal canvas of public expression.
Its interior is also amazing.
See also:
- Ancient mysterious bridges from around the world - 40 photos
- Light through the centuries - 28 breathtaking photos of lighthouses
- 50 most beautiful libraries from around the world. A book lover's dream
- The most beautiful castles in the world where you can relax - 15 places
- 18 Real Places That Inspired Walt Disney Studios
August 26, 2016
