Individual Expression

It really began with my mother taking me to see galleries

And to listen to music when I was a child.

She tried to exposed me to those kinds of things.

That was very personal,

And I think very important to me.

I still go very often.

I always go to concerts and listen to music, classical music.

I am not a scholar, but I am a fan.

I need that kind of inspiration.

I have continued to study art history on my own, wherever I go.

There certainly was not much theory.

We did not study theory.

I myself came at it from the arts,

And I was always interested in painting and sculpture.

I was different from the other architects in that way,

Although I did not realize it when I was a student.

I only realized that I was different later on my career.

by Frank Gehry

Style

Style for me is something completely different. You can be, what we consider in our culture, unattractive and have great style. You can have no money and have great style. You can have a lot of money and have great style.

More often, you have a lot of money and have terrible style. You just plaster yourself with what you think you're supposed to be wearing, and you lost yourself.

Style for me is someone who figures out who they are, what works on them, what they feel good in and develops their character and the outer expression of their character.

by Tom Ford

Imaginative Principles

I think that in our design, what lies at the roots of everything are not just our desire to better solve the programs or come up with extraordinary space structures, but to go beyond them to eventually create imaginative principles of our own. It may be that when we are creating a building we are also trying to create the principles of the building at the same time.

For the time being, the method we are using is premised on the extremely modern idea of making the content of the building the human actions that take place within to kind of create the architectural form.

by SANAA

The Living Room of The Jacobs House

...

Having survive the entrance, our eyes adjust to the warm reflected light of amber pine and red concrete, a light that complements the cooler greens and blues outside. Clerestory windows relieve the insistent board and batten west wall to our right, a wall that is reinforced by bookshelves extending effortlessly from the battens behind. This suspended library piece terminates at its far end with a hovering desk that both locks into the corner, providing a transition from wood wall to a southern brick pier, and declares its independence, its horizontal surface floating free of the batten's steady measure. Bricks stabilize the head; their mass prevents the energetic movement of the unballasted wooden tail. Yet the bricks also stagger back and bend to provide a reading nook behind the desk, are punctuated by glazing that recapitulates the battens, and turn yet again into the landscape beyond with a final bow to the east wall's glazed doors. The solitary activities of family members enter the loose play of wood, brick, and glass within the measued field of battens and scored red floor.

by Michael Cadwell

Strange Details

The Columns of Farnsworth House

..., all the exposed steel connections at the Farnsworth House are plug welds. Plug welding is an elaborate process: steel erectors first drill the columns with holes at the beam connections and fit the columns with erection seats; they then place the perimeter beam on these seats, shim the beam level, and clamp it secure; next, welders plug the vacant column holes, fusing the column to the beam; and finally, finishers remove the erection seats and sand all surfaces smooth. Curiously, these connections require a sequence of operations that demand a high degree of craft, yet each operation disappears with the next. The mechanical craft of the seated connection disappears with the industrial craft of welding, the industrial craft of welding disappears with the handcraft of sanding, and the handcraft of sanding disappears with its own operation. There is no glorification of technology in this curious sequence, just as there is no remnant of craft. To underscore this, the steel fabricators brushed the steel's surface free of burrs and the finishers painted the steel with successive coats of flat white enamel.

by Michael Cadwell

Strange Details

The Bridge of Querini Stampalia

...

However, something stranger is happening. The bridge is eccentric; its crest is called out by an elliptical pin joint, the campo elevation clearly higher than our destination. Scarpa has subtly undercut this difference by eliding the connection of stone to steel, pulling up the campo border with Istrian steps rather than cleanly breaking to steel at the campo. The destination is stranger still: it is a window (not a door) through a wall (which is disintegrating) into what is clearly the basement of the palazzo. And the window frame, which we slam up againts, has a double door in it. These doors reintroduce steel, but in a different guise: cold, heavy, rusted stock is woven and grommeted with a penal vengeance. The door pinch us, yank us inward, and clang shut. With this sudden acceleration of effects, we are inside.

by Michael Cadwell,

Strange Details

The Spirit of Our Time

Each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it.

This is no less true of steel and concrete [than of wood, brick, and stone].

We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself.

New Materials are not necessarily superior.

Each material is only what we make of it.

We must be as familiar with the functions of our buildings as with our materials.

We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be.

And just as we acquaint ourselves with materials, just as we must understand functions, so we must become familiar with the psychological and spiritual factors of our day.

No cultural activity is possible otherwise; for we are dependent on the spirit of our time.

by Mies van der Rohe