I'm a bad customer for my own buildings! If I'm choosing an apartment, I choose one about five or six stories high so that I can see the people, the trees, and the world on the street. Beyond that, I lose contact with the ground!
Interpretation
The quote reflects the importance of being connected to the environment and community in architectural design.
Cesar Pelli emphasizes the significance of human connection to the surroundings in architecture, using his preference for mid-rise buildings as an example. He believes that buildings should allow inhabitants to experience their environment and maintain a relationship with the ground and community rather than feeling isolated in tall structures.
In practice
In a discussion about urban planning, this quote can highlight the need for mid-rise buildings that promote community interaction.
I realize that having a style would be very beneficial for my practice from a marketing standpoint, but I can't do it. I believe my responsibilities as an architect are to design the most appropriate building for the place. Each place has a distinct culture and function, which for me requires an appropriate answer.
Architecture adds dimensions to my life that would be impossible to acquire if I retired. The beautiful thing about architecture is that every project is brand new. I am forced to renew myself with every project. Isn't that wonderful?
I'm particularly interested in the public role that all buildings play. I believe that we architects should try to go beyond our basic obligations to the public, and our opportunities to do so are many.
If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession’s responsibilities.
I would like to use architecture to create bonds between people who live in cities, and even use it to recover the communities that used to exist in every single city.
Most of the wonderful places in the world were not made by architects but by the people.
Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.
A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.
All buildings, large or small, public or private, have a public face, a facade; they therefore, without exception, have a positive or negative effect on the quality of the public realm, enriching or impoverishing it in a lasting and radical manner. The architecture of the city and public space is a matter of common concern to the same degree as laws and language—they are the foundation of civility and civilisation.
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