69 Best Architecture Quotes That’ll Inspire You to Be an Architect

The science, art, or practice of designing and constructing something is called architecture. From massive urban planning to small building designs — everything is included within the periphery of architecture.

Architecture practice commenced in the prehistoric era to express the beauty and diversity of cultures from all around the world. Hence at present, different ancient architectural structures are considered symbols of native culture.

All the high-rise buildings, beautiful houses, museums, malls, stadiums, universities, towers, and any other construction you see around you were once just an image in an architect’s mind. And because of their designed blueprints, these images are now a reality right in front of you.

To be an architect is to have the rare power of being able to materialize the universe you created inside your head into something entirely tangible. To be an architect is a gift, a blessing, something not everyone can get.

Are you interested in architecture but not sure whether you should pursue it? Check out these 69 quotes on architecture that might just confirm your dream!

Architecture Quotes to Boost Your Imagination

1. To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it. –Daniel Libeskind
2. Action is the foundational key to all success. –Pablo Picasso
3. A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end, must be unmeasured. –Louis Kahn
4. In reality, some images or drawings have a greater impact than many buildings that are built. –Emilio Ambasz
5. Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. –Frank Gehry
6. I would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources, to move into the future. –Tadao Ando
7. Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity. –Renzo Piano
8. Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea. –Yoshio Taniguchi
9. Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder. –Daniel Libeskind

All architects have a vast world inside their heads, a world where countless constructions are continually taking place, each one a different peak of artistic quality. Architects are the only people who can make their vast dreams turn into reality.

Being an architect isn’t just about drawing structures and calculating the least expensive construction process. Being an architect is about bringing the world in your imagination out of your head and into the real world so that everyone can live in the dream.

Architecture Quotes for Portfolio You Should Know

1. Architecture is an expression of values. –Norman Foster
2. Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put a man into possession of his own earth. –Frank Lloyd Wright
3. Architecture is the alpha principle of all arts. –Louis Ferdinand Celine
4. Architecture begins where engineering ends. –Walter Gropius
5. We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. –Winston Churchill
6. Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder. –Daniel Libeskind
7. God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is, at least for me, an abuse of paper. –Alvar Aalto
8. Less is more. –Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
9. Architecture Aims At Eternity. –Christopher Wren
10. Architecture is the reaching out for truth. –Louis I Kahn
11. Each new situation requires a new architecture. –Jean Nouvel

Architecture is the best and greatest kind of art. It never remains limited to the frame of the artist’s canvas; rather, it gets expanded to a much wider, more tangible prospect. From pencils and rulers, it reaches the length of bricks and cement.

With art, you can express yourself. With architecture, you can express yourself and simultaneously materialize the expression for others to benefit from it.  Whether it’s a 125-storeyed building or a little cottage, our world becomes more beautiful through an architect’s mind.

Funny Architecture Captions to Share on Instagram and Pinterest

1. Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems we split the possibilities to make good building art. –Alvar Aalto
2. A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
3. The only thing wrong with architecture is architects. –Frank Lloyd Wright
4. Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. –Steve Martin
5. Architecture is the thoughtful making of space. –Louis Kahn
6. Architecture should speak of its time, and place, but yearn for timelessness. –Frank Gehry
7. There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. –Gilbert K. Chesterton
8. The Sun does not realize how wonderful it is until after a room is made. –Louis Kahn

Architects are the crafter of world civilization. Through their creative mental imageries and ideas, beautiful and artistic constructions come into life. They create, they design, they innovate. They beautify our surroundings, making sure we can live in peace and safety.

Architects are the only people who can meet both the utilitarian and aesthetic needs of an individual. They shape the world with their creative minds and their skillful hands. They also provide shelter as well as aesthetic pleasure. They create safe as well as memorable structures.

So architects are the real artists. They bring more meaning and usefulness to the more commonly misunderstood hobby that is art. They set examples of culture and traditions; they preserve the history of a society, you may also have an interest in quotes about history and quotes about society.

Old Architecture Quotes You Will Be Interested In

1. By dint of building well, you get to be a good architect. –Aristotle
2. Beauty perishes in life but is immortal in art. –Leonardo da Vinci
3. The job of the architect today is to create beautiful buildings. That’s all. –Philip Johnson
4. Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. –Le Corbusier
5. My work is not about “form follows function,” but “form follows beauty” or, even better, “form follows feminine”. –Oscar Niemeyer
6. There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners. –Antonio Gaudi
7. Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. –Le Corbusier
8. 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

The history of architectural practices dates back to thousands of years ago. It isn’t art if it doesn’t give people pleasure, and it isn’t useful if it isn’t built following a sensible and safe structure. So architects have to think about both, not either.

Anything is possible in the imaginary world, but not everything is possible in the real one. So it is important for an architect to remain connected to reality and the means possible to achieve by humans while making the design. If they focus solely on the aesthetic aspects, their construction might end up being a threat.

On the other hand, if your focus is fully on making the safest structure and ensuring the least construction cost, you will not be able to create something aesthetically pleasing, and hence, it won’t be considered art.

Quotes about Architecture and Culture That’ll Open Your Mind

1. Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization. –Alvar Aalto
2. Everything we design is a response to the specific climate and culture of a particular place. –Norman Foster
3. Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture. –Rem Koolhaas
4. I acquired an admiration for Japanese culture, art, and architecture, and learned of the existence of the game of GO, which I still play. –Philip Warren Anderson
5. Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noblemen. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall. –Frank Lloyd Wright
6. Architecture never derived its force from the stability of culture, but rather from the expression of those moments when that sense of stability slipped. –Mark Wigley
7. When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature -this very unique to Japan. –Tadao Ando

Architectural structures have always been considered a symbol of the culture of a particular society, nation, or civilization it has been created or built-in. The reflection of a society’s habits, festivities, practices, values, ideals — the whole culture in general, is often seen through architecture.

Architecture stands as proof of the creative qualities of the people who used to walk the soil you are walking today. These proofs keep civilization alive and thriving because they keep the culture alive and thriving. In the gap created from the absence of cultural values and ideals, a civilization will undoubtedly fall in and meet its end.

Ancient Architecture Sayings to Share with Your Friends

1. Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms. –Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
2. The building’s identity resided in the ornament. –Louis Sullivan
3. Architecture begins where engineering ends. –Walter Gropius
4. The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own, we have no soul of our own civilization. –Frank Lloyd Wright
5. Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins. –Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
6. 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
7. Only architecture that considers the human scale and interaction is successful architecture. –Jan Gehl
8. Architecture is about public space held by buildings. –Richard Rogers
9. Architecture is about understanding the world and turning it into a more meaningful and humane place. –Juhani Pallasmaa
10. We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. –R. Buckminster Fuller
11. It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time. –David Allan Coe

Through architecture, a simple construction gets new identity, a new meaning, a new story. It is an art that is born from the mind, expressed through the fingers, and materialized into something real through hard work. It is the soul of our civilization and the heart of our society.

Architecture isn’t simply about placing some rods after the other or putting two bricks together. It is about articulating the pattern of placement of those rods that will ensure the highest safety and the shape of the bricks that will turn the construction into a piece of art.

Architecture Design Quotes by Famous Architects in History

1. Designers think everything done by someone else is awful, and that they could do it better themselves, which explains why I designed my own living room carpet, I suppose. –Chris Bangle
2. The life of a designer is one of a fight: fight against the ugliness. –Massimo Vignelli
3. Our opportunity, as designers, is to learn how to handle the complexity, rather than shy away from it, and to realize that the big art of design is to make complicated things simple. –Tim Parsey
4. I understand that today, some developers are asking architects to design eye-catching, iconic buildings. Fortunately, I’ve not had that kind of client so far. –Fumihiko Maki
5. Good architecture is like a good therapy session, a good marriage, a good poem –gently and almost invisibly allowing you to be you, as flawed and as beautiful as you are. –Robert Sullivan
6. A profound design process eventually makes the patron, the architect, and every occasional visitor in the building a slightly better human being. –Juhani Pallasmaa
7. The fundamental failure of the most graphic, product, architectural, and even urban design is its insistence on serving the God of Looking-Good rather than the God of Being-Good. –Richard Saul Wurman
8. As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown. –Normon Foster
9. All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. –Philip Johnson

The world we live in has gifted us many talented architects, and those gifted architects have gifted us an artistic world to live in. These wonderful designers have left us several meaningful quotes to ponder for a deeper understanding of this art.

To design something isn’t a simple job; it requires a great deal of understanding about what you want to see on the paper and how you want the complex patterns in your mind to be expressed in simple yet artistic shapes.

To be an architect is to form a balance among the past, present, and future, and create something that surpasses all boundaries of time, create something indestructible, something that will remain as a mark in the viewer’s heart forever.

To be an architect is to create something that speaks without actually speaking. An architect’s aim is not to make the design look good, but to ensure that the design will bring good to the world.

Quotes on Temple Architecture That’ll Make You Peaceful

1. I enjoy art, architecture, museums, churches, and temples; anything that gives me insight into the history and soul of the place I’m in. I can also be a beach bum -I like to laze in the shade of a palm tree with a good book or float in a warm sea at sundown. –Cherie Lunghi
2. It is not the architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs. –Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
3. Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families. –Hernan Cortes
4. Although prefabrication has a long history -the ancient Romans shipped pre-cut stone columns, pediments, and other architectural elements to their colonies in North Africa, where the numbered parts were reassembled into temples -the idea took on a new impetus with the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. –Martin Filler
5. The artistic part of us all -I think that the easiest way to appreciate this -is through architecture. Architecture is very impressive; the beauty of buildings, temples. –Carlos Slim
6. Writing generally, it may be said that in design, roof, and general aspect, Japanese Buddhist temples are all alike. The sacred architectural idea expresses itself in nearly the same form always. –Isabella Bird

Temples are a wonderful example of the world’s greatest architectural achievements. Temples are the house of gods, where people go to worship and seek assistance in the way of their lives. Hence temples should be peaceful places free of filth, where one can attain full peace of mind.

The countless unique designs embellished on the walls of the temples have made that possible. Because of these, in the house of the gods lie beauty, grace, peace, and hope (check our hope quotes collections). The architectural details embroidering temples all around the world are indeed a magnificent sight.

These temples not only carry the religious beliefs but also the culture of the particular society. The expression of their history and tradition that was threaded by their religious beliefs and practices can be noticed in the temples.

Final Thoughts on Architecture Quotes

Those who underestimate the vast power of creativity and innovation held in architects’ hands are simply foolish. Architects bring a great amount of meaning and beauty to this world through their thinking, designs, and creations.

Architecture is a noble profession, and also a very enjoyable one. There aren’t many professions in this world where you can directly benefit and please others while benefiting and pleasing yourself the same. Hence all architects should be respected for their jobs, for they are all true gems.

So are you pursuing architecture or not?