All Quotes by Frank Gehry
“Chicago's one of the rare places where architecture is more visible.”
“I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.”
“A lot of people don't get it, but I design from the inside out so that the finished product looks inevitable somehow. I think it's important to create spaces that people like to be in, that are humanistic.”
“Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place, and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.”
“It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone.”
“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”
“I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.”
“You have freedom, so you have to make choices - and at the point when I make a choice, the building starts to look like a Frank Gehry building. It's a signature.”
“I don't want to do architecture that's dry and dull.”
“There are a lot of questions about whether architecture is art. The people who ask that think pretty tract houses are architecture. But that doesn't hold up.”
“This neo-minimalism super cold stuff is weird to me. I need a place where I can come home and take my shoes off.”
“Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. 'The client made me do this.' 'The city made me do this.' 'Oh, the budget.' I don't believe that anymore.”
“I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.”
“Architecture is a service business. An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that.”
“I am obsessed with architecture. It is true, I am restless, trying to find myself as an architect, and how best to contribute in this world filled with contradiction, disparity, and inequality, even passion and opportunity.”
“I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit. To this container, this sculpture, the user brings his baggage, his program, and interacts with it to accommodate his needs. If he can't do that, I've failed.”
“It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone.”
“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”
“A lot of people don't get it, but I design from the inside out so that the finished product looks inevitable somehow. I think it's important to create spaces that people like to be in, that are humanistic.”
“Life is chaotic, dangerous, and surprising. Buildings should reflect that.”
“I get that a lot because I've hung around with a lot of artists and I'm very close to a lot of them. I'm very involved in their work; I think a lot of my ideas have grown out of it, and that there's been some give and take.”
“[ Brancusi ] has had more influence on my work than most architects.”
“I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination. I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building.”
“I do think democracy has produced chaos, especially visual. A lot of people don't like it and yearn for nineteenth-century images, forgetting that the politics of those images were different than the democracy we love.”
“Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.”