|
Skyscraper Quotes
The building of a "Skyscraper church" would seem to be a move in the right
direction.
- Anonymous
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever
made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified
statue, of much more than heroic size.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why
Chippendale is famous.
- Mies Van de Rohe, 1886 - 1969
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But the power of destiny is something awesome; neither wealth, nor Ares, nor a
tower, nor dark-hulled ships might escape it.
- Sophocles, 497 - 405 BC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A skyscraper is a boast in glass and steel.
- Mason Cooley
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Houston Skyline
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers,
jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much
better cocktails.
-Federico Garcia Lorca
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York... When civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
- David Letterman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a
skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and
wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and
its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and
can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view
gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.
- Albert Einstein
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most Buildings now are glorified wallpaper.
- Alan Bird
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street
offers itself to man.
- Roland Barthes, 1915 - 1980
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The city's got the right name- New York. Nothing ever gets old around here.
- Ralph Stephenson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Otis's apparatus recovers the uncounted planes that have been floating in the
thin air of speculation and reveals their superiority in a metropolitan paradox:
the greater the distance from the earth, the closer the communication with what
remains of nature (i.e. light and air). The elevator is the ultimate
self-fulfilling prophecy: the further up it goes, the more undesirable the
circumstances it leaves behind.
- Rem Koolhaas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not the skyscraper you look at, it's the architect.
- Anonymous
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congestion is Beautiful.
- Raymond Hood
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself; only the
Skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a
frontier in the sky.
- Rem Koolhaas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built
on a foundation of necessity.
- I.M. Pei
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... a building must be both background and foreground. As foreground, it must
have some exceptional qualities. But it must also try very hard to knit into the
fabric...
- Cesar Pelli
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Architecture is a tradition, a long continuum. Whether we break with tradition
or enhance it, we are still connected to that past. We evolve.
- Richard Meier
|