Best Architecture Quotes

If you’re looking for some inspiration for your next architecture project or to get through your next assignment, here are some architecture quotes from famous leaders and architects of nations, buildings, schools of thoughts, and more.

We have also tried to interpret these inspirational architecture quotes -- making them applicable to our tech-infused, social media-powered, and globally-linked lives. 

But the words of the wise can have so many interpretations, so feel free to find inspiration through them in your own way.

Best inspirational architecture quotes

Follow your passion and get paid for it

“Ask not what your architecture can do for you. Ask what you can do for your architecture. Then invoice the client.” - John F. Kennedy

Gain knowledge. Gain purpose.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you become an architect and the day you find out why.” - Mark Twain

Some more famous architecture quotes

Industry disruptors can inspire transformation

​​“There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?” – Zaha Hadid

Now that’s heavy stuff:

“Never in the field of architecture was so much owed by so many to so few architects with such small fees.” - Winston Churchill

So, render what they want?

“For clients who like that kind of architecture, that is the kind of architecture they will like.” - Abraham Lincoln

“I don’t know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.” – Frank Gehry

Good vibes only

“Keep away from architects who try to belittle your ambitions. Small architects always do that, but the really great architects make you feel that you, too, can become great.” - Mark Twain

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Architecture design quotes

Minimalism!

“Less is more.”  – Mies van der Rohe

“Great architecture is achieved by simply removing all the parts that are not needed. Like all the furniture.” - Michaelangelo

And now from the great ‘Da Vinci’:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” - - Joe Sparano

Well, what’s a world without healthy dissent:

“Less is a bore.” - Robert Venturi

Functional designing

“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.”  – Charles Eames

“Form ever follows function.”  – Louis Sullivan

Couldn’t have said it better myself:

“Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space… On the one hand it’s about shelter, but it’s also about pleasure.” – Zaha Hadid

But functionality without beauty?

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. But when I’ve finished, if the solution is not beautiful I know it’s wrong.” – Buckminster Fuller

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Modern architecture quotes

“Modern architecture is not a style, it's an attitude.” - Marcel Breuer

“Modern architecture does not mean the use of immature new materials; the main thing is to refine materials in a more human direction.” - Alvar Aalto

“Each new situation requires a new architecture.” - Jean Nouvel

Adapt and innovate

“You can not create the architecture of tomorrow without forgetting the architecture of yesterday. Today.” - Winston Churchill

On a different note:

“As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.” – Norman Foster

If not yesterday or tomorrow, then ‘forever’:

 “Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”  – Frank Gehry

Landscape architecture quotes

“Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake.” – Luis Barragan

“The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

Sustainable architecture

“This (sustainable housing) is not a moral issue, it’s not a spiritual issue, it’s not a political issue, it is a logical issue.” - Michael Reynolds

Interior architecture quotes

“A room is not a room without natural light.” – Louis Kahn

“The home should be the treasure chest of living.” – Le Corbusier

“No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.” – William Morris

“Interior decoration partly thrives on being social.” – Nicholas Haslam

“Real comfort, visual and physical, is vital to every room.” – Mark Hampton

Funny architecture quotes

Dress the part

“Clothing makes the architect. Naked architects have little to no influence on society.” - Mark Twain

Modernism isn’t every one’s cup of tea

“In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it’s modern architecture.” - Nancy Banks-Smith

Power trip

“Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because the idea wasn't theirs.” - Frank Chimero

Choices, choices

“For me, design is like choosing what I'm going to wear for the day – only much more complicated and not really the same at all.” - Robynne Raye

Architecture philosophy quotes

Chaos

“Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real.” - Frank Stella

Immerse yourself

“God is in the details.”  – Mies van der Rohe

A clean slate every time :)

“One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again.” – Renzo Piano

Practice makes one… as good as they can get (no presh!)

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle

Greatness inspires greatness

“The architect represents neither a Dionysian (spontaneous) nor an Apollinian (logical) condition: here it is the mighty act of will, the will which moves mountains, the intoxication of the strong will, which demands artistic expression. The most powerful men have always inspired the architects; the architect has always been influenced by power.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Most importantly - We become our environment!

“We shape our buildings: therefore they shape us.” - Winston Churchill