4 of My Favourite Quotes by Architects

By architect Ben Wollen

Architects aren’t really known for their prose. Whilst we might be adept with a pen, our words and narrative are in different sorts of lines on a page. There are many architects who write about architecture – that’s a given. When it comes to writing fiction, there are very few who have made the transition. A couple come to mind. One was a professor of my old university lecturer-turned-crime writer, Barry Maitland. The other is Arundhati Roy, who won the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things

It’s surprising to me that there aren’t more architects-turned-authors given there’s a similarity in the setting up of the structure for a building as to that of a novel. Architects will often talk about the narrative of a building and how it is revealed to those that occupy it in a sequence of events.

I definitely believe that every building tells a story – sometimes many stories!

What architects do seem to be good at is coming up with quotes. Some of these have gone on to be used in non-architectural parlance. Another thing architects are good at are lists, and so here I present a shortlist of my favourite architecture quotes and a little bit on their meaning:

1. “Touch the Earth Lightly” – Glenn Murcutt (adapted from an Indigenous Australian proverb)

Our one and only Pritzker Prize-winning architect. From early in his career, Glenn adopted this proverb to describe his process of design. The more pragmatic explanation for this phrase would be putting too many footings into the ground and lifting the building above the ground. Whilst many of his buildings do this, the phrase has a deeper meaning. It refers to an understanding of country, to a climate-responsive design that matches its place and a sustainability that is measured by the building’s worth, more than its solar panels on the roof.

2. “Less is more” – Mies van der Rohe

One of my favourites. Mies was a genius at the machine aesthetic popular in the early 20th Century. His Barcelona pavilion is one of those Architectural precedents that every architecture student studies at some point in their education. This quote refers to his minimalist approach to architecture and the rejection of ornament. His aesthetic was one of open unadorned spaces, carefully detailed so as to allow space to speak for itself rather than impose his will upon it. Another favourite of mine from Mies is “God is in the details”. This in reference to his extreme measures to conceal all evidence of the man-made.

3. “Less is a bore” – Robert Venturi

Another one of my favourites that flips the switch on Mies. Venturi was one of the PostModernists who railed against the machine aesthetic of modernist buildings and the sterile places they were turning our cities into. He and the other post-modernists decried the lack of ornament on modern buildings, suggesting it robbed civilisation of its narrative and turned our urban environments into a sterile homogeneity. They espoused that all of architectural history should inspire new buildings and that it can be reinterpreted as freely as the architect would feel fit. All good in theory, but many of the postmodern buildings ended up aesthetic monsters.

4. “A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.” – Frank Lloyd Wright I love this one. If you ever have some spare moments and want to get into the mind of one the world’s greatest architects, go to Youtube and search his name. There are some remarkable interviews on there, capturing the tremendous ego that was Frank Lloyd Wright. He had some other great quotes as well, but this one speaks of the tremendous fear felt by architects should they ever design an ugly building. Lucky most of Frank’s didn’t need vines!