Arthur Erickson Quotes

66 quotes in 888 categories

• Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?
• Our settlement of land is without regard to the best use of land.
• We are not peddlers of the fashionable. We believe that good design defies fashion, is truly innovative, eminently sensible, yet a source of inspiration to…
• Life is rich, always changing, always challenging, and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood, concrete, glass and steel, of transforming human aspirations…
• It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.
• The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infectious disease, decimating whatever values existed before.
• The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.
• No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.
• The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a…
• Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
• Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that…
• Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.
• Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly.
• Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.
• The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.
• Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.
• The delusion of entertainment is devoid of meaning. It may amuse us for a bit, but after the initial hit we are left with the…
• The heart, not the head, must be the guide.
• The innovative spirit was America's strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts.
• This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... the inveterate materialism which has become the model for…

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