1000+ Funny Creative Top Architecture Quotes and Catchy Tagline Sayings and Phrases

Top 1000+ Architecture Quotes: Architecture inspires people to think, so it’s no wonder that so many famous writers, artists, politicians and designers have such profound and fascinating observations about architecture. Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old architecture quotes, architecture sayings, and architecture proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources. Whether you embrace minimalism or adore flamboyance, everyone has experiences and tastes that shape the way they interact with the built world.

If you’re involved in architecture or design, I hope these popular architecture quotes will delight, encourage, enrage and inspire. Every now and then you need something to pick you up, distract you from the blank page, and let you know that everything is okay and that you are awesome (not necessarily in that order). Here are my most favorite design related quotes that just might do the trick. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Best popular architecture quotes

Minimalist architecture quotes

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

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space. – Louis Kahn

Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward Heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. – Walter Gropius

Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design. – Stephen Gardiner

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

Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves. – Julia Morgan

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. – Winston Churchill

Whatever good things we build end up building us. – Jim Rohn

It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time. – David Allan Coe

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Inspirational Architecture Quotes by Famous Architects and Interior Designers

Architecture quotes about nature

The beauty of design surrounds us wherever we go. From the emotion that overcomes you when entering a building to walking through a city with an undeniably cohesive flow – design’s impact can’t be undervalued.

Architecture is a visual art and the buildings speak for themselves. – Julia Morgan

I call architecture frozen music. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There is begins. – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Architecture is the learned game correct and magnificent of forms assembled in the light. – Le Corbusier

Good buildings come from good people and all problems are solved by good design. – Stephen Gardiner

Each new situation requires a new architecture. – Jean Nouvel

Architecture is inhabited sculpture. – Constantin Brancusi

98% of what gets built today is shit. – Frank Gehry

Architecture is an expression of values. – Norman Foster

Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times. – Richard Rogers

Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistakes. – Luis Barragan

We do not create the work. I believe we, in fact, are discoverers. – Glenn Murcutt

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

Architecture is not about space but about time. – Vito Acconel

The door handle is the handshake of the building. – Juhani Pallasmaa

The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it. – David Chipperfield

I don’t build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build. – Ayn Rand

New funny architecture quotes

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth. – Louis Kahn

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

God is in the details. – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture. – Tadao Ando

My architecture is easy to understand and enjoy, I hope it also is hard to forget. – Oscar Niemeyer

Even a brick wants to be something. – Louis Kahn

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

Life is architecture and architecture is the mirror of life. – I.M. Pei

Build! Don’t Talk. – Ludwig Mies ven der Rohe

Architects can’t force people to connect, it can only plan the crossing points, remove barriers and make the meeting places useful and attractive. – Denise Scott

The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life. – Frank Lloyd Wright

A design isn’t finished until someone is using it. – Brenda Laurel

Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance. – Rern Koolhaas

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

Words about architecture sayings

Architects and designers have the esoteric skill set that makes the erection of these wondrous structures a possibility. They possess the knowledge, vision, and resilience to make a mere idea a remarkable reality. Here are words of wisdom from truly brilliant architects to keep you inspired:

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

The life of a designer is one of fight: fight against the ugliness. – Massimo Vignelli

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

The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollinian 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

Less is a bore. – Robert Venturi

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

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

Everything is designed. Few things are designed well. – Brian Reed

To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history, but to articulate it. – Daniel Libeskind

Practice safe design: Use a concept. – Petrula Vrontikis

Nothing in this world is more simple and more cheap than making cities that provide better for people. – Jan Gehl

Creative taglines for designers

People ignore design that ignores people. – Frank Chimero

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

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

The Sun does not realise how wonderful it is until after a room is made. – Louis Kahn

Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because the idea wasn’t theirs. – Frank Chimero

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable. – Frank Lloyd Wright

Design should never say, “Look at me!” It should always say, “Look at this!” – David Craib

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere. – Albert Einstein

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. – Mies van de Rohe

Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent. – Joe Sparano

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

In pure architecture the smallest detail should have a meaning or serve a purpose. – Augustus W. N. Pugin

I am simply submerged in work from five in the morning to eleven at night; almost need a few days off to escape a breakdown! – Richard Neutra

Architecture humors

The most innovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivate an appetite for thinking wrong. – Marty Neumeier

Architecture never derived its force from stability of culture, but rather from the expression of those moments when that sense of stability slipped. – Mark Wigley

I’ve noticed the computer sometimes leads to rather bland decision-making; Now, anybody can do a wobbly, blobby building. – Peter Cook

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

I like ruins because what remains is not the total design, but the clarity of thought, the naked structure, the spirit of the thing. – Tadao Ando

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. – Frank Lloyd Wright

Give them the vision of Oz, show them the direction, convince them you can create the yellow brick road; the rest is civil engineering. – Dirk Susharme

Design is where science and art break even. – Mieke Gerritzen

Hell, there are no rules here; We’re trying to accomplish something. – Thomas Edison

A profound design process eventually makes the patron, the architect, and every occasional visitor in the building a slightly better human being. – Juhani Pallasmaa

Creative taglines for architects

Architecture is the art of how to waste space. – Philip Johnson

I don’t build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build. – Ayn Rand

A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense. – Bruno Munari

People who build their own home tend to be very courageous. These people are curious about life. They’re thinking about what it means to live in a house, rather than just buying a commodity and making it work. – Tom Kundig

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

Being a famous designer is like being a famous dentist. – Noreen Morioka

Light, God’s eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building. – Thomas Fuller

We live in a time of renaissance … cities are coming back to life, after a long neglect. – Daniel Libeskind

Ah, to build, to build!

That is the noblest art of all the arts.

Painting and sculpture are but images,

Are merely shadows cast by outward things

On stone or canvas, having in themselves

No separate existence. Architecture,

Existing in itself, and not in seeming

A something it is not, surpasses them

As substance shadow. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Famous Architecture quotes for portfolio

Architecture is a learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. – Le Corbusier

Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect’s task, therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise. – Adolf Loos

The desire to reach for the sky runs very deep in the human psyche. – César Pelli

I’m convinced that without bad design, the world would be a far less stimulating place; we would have nothing to marvel over and nothing to be nostalgic about. – Carrie Phillips

Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder. – Daniel Libeskind

An object should be judged by whether it has a form consistent with its use. – Bruno Munari

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

Very often the opinion of the clients must be disregarded in their own interest. – John M. Johnson

Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood. – Fabien Barral

The greatest architectural illusion is not Baroque fancy or Victorian flamboyant, but minimalism. – Kevin McCloud

Architecture student quotes

We shape our buildings: therefore they shape us. – Winston Churchill

Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity. – Renzo Piano

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

I call architecture frozen music. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Any work of architecture that does not express serenity is a mistake. – Luis Barragán

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money. – Ambrose Bierce

A camel is a horse designed by committee. – Sir Alec Issigonis

People think that design is styling. Design is not style. It’s not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing. – Paola Antonelli

Quotes on architecture and life

Home is where you hang your architect. – Chare Booth Luce

Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea. – Yoshio Taniguchi

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway

I find modernist design boring, but it’s so much faster! – Christine Suewon Lee

The fundamental failure of 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

You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that. Charles, Prince of Wales

When we build, let us think that we build forever. – John Ruskin

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

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

There is a danger when every building has to look spectacular; to look like it is changing the world. I don’t care how a building looks if it means something, not to architects, but to the people who use it. – David Chipperfield

Status for architecture students

Here, then, is what I wanted to tell you of my architecture. I created it with courage and idealism, but also with an awareness of the fact that what is important is life, friends, and attempting to make this unjust world a better place in which to live. – Oscar Niemeyer

The room is there for the human being – not the human being for the room. – El Lissitzky

In the face of the economic plight, it is our task to become pioneers of simplicity, that is, to find a simple form for all of life’s necessities, which is at the same time respectable and genuine. – Oskar Schlemmer

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. – Walt Disney

The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics. – Honore de Balzac

Architecture is inhabited sculpture. – Constantin Brancusi

The architect’s role is to make the mythic real. – Sotirios Kotoulas

We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls. – Bill Bryson

Form ever follows function. – Louis H. Sullivan

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order. – Frank Lloyd Wright

Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart. – Arthur Erickson

Quotes about architecture and culture

Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can’t be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole. – Maya Lin

The first gesture of an architect is to draw a perimeter; in other words, to separate the microclimate from the macro space outside. This in itself is a sacred act. Architecture in itself conveys this idea of limiting space. It’s a limit between the finite and the infinite. From this point of view, all architecture is sacred. – Mario Botta

Architecture is the plant fertilizer of our lives; it is the way to be a big, great-tasting tomato. – Robert Sullivan

Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.

– Ernest Dimnet

It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man.

– Michelangelo

To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works. – Ai Weiwei

Architecture quotes in Hindi

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

The modern architect is, generally speaking, art’s greatest enemy.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That’s art to me.

Maya Lin

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

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

Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.

– Ernest Dimnet

Among the planets of the arts, architecture is the dark side of the moon.

– Bruno Zevi

Architecture is all around us. The process of planning, designing, and constructing is an art form within itself. Just like we admire historical constructions, architecture plays an important role for future generations to witness our cultural achievements.

Crux of catchy architecture phrases

The creative manipulation encompasses our intellectual ideas to become a reality with carefully planned drawings, specifications, and structures. If you’re an architecture lover or an aspiring architect, this is a great treat for you. We collected 1000+ constructive quotes about architecture and architectural design. Enjoy!