We're always taught that we're building for permanence, but why? I like the idea of a prosthetic architecture! When a section is removed, the building readjusts its weight distribution, like a living body.
Elizabeth DillerRead
We try to make buildings last long and be resilient but also be not so idiosyncratic that they can't change.
Interpretation
Buildings should be durable yet flexible to future changes.
This quote emphasizes the balance that architects must strike between creating structures that are both enduring and adaptable. While resilience and longevity are important for buildings, they must also maintain enough versatility to undergo transformations, ensuring they remain functional and relevant over time in a changing environment.
In practice
During a presentation on sustainable architecture, this quote could emphasize the importance of flexibility in design.
We're always taught that we're building for permanence, but why? I like the idea of a prosthetic architecture! When a section is removed, the building readjusts its weight distribution, like a living body.
Aside from keeping the rain out and producing some usable space, architecture is nothing but a special-effects machine that delights and disturbs the senses.
Architects mostly work for privileged people, people who have money and power. Power and money are invisible, so people hire us to visualize their power and money by making monumental architecture. I love to make monuments, too, but I thought perhaps we can use our experience and knowledge more for the general public, even for those who have lost their houses in natural disasters.
What is now called 'green architecture' is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.
Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.
The difference between a builder and an architect is that an architect also cares about desire, about dreams.
Whoβs afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just donβt know. The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale β and ultimately it is a gamble β demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.
Why should we build very large spaces when they are not necessary? We can design halls spanning several kilometres and covering a whole city, but we have to ask, what does it really make? What does society really need?
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