Category Archives: Quote

Deadlines

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. -Douglas Adams
If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow. -Mario Andretti

Never Be An Architect

You’ll never be an Architect, but aim for a career in journalism!
-Toivo Salervo to Alvar Aalto, who, in the summer of 1916, just before beginning his studies in architecture, was a trainee in Salervo’s architects’ office. #

2 years today

The taste of the apple….lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in a similar way…poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act, the thrill, the [...]

Torture by another name

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many [...]

The Philosophy of space

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
That the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
That the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it [...]

OMA at work

I’m unsure what to make of this essay about working at O.M.A. On the one hand I’m thrilled by the thought of working there in a kind of supercharged electrical field of design, where ideas are ruthlessly produced, used ,discarded, reworked. On the other it sounds like a slightly authoritarian production office which [...]

Let one building be like another

Let one building be like another. We won’t be published in Deutsche
Kunst und Dekoration and we won’t be made professors of applied art,
but we will have served ourselves, our times, our nation and mankind to
the best of our ability. (via) -Adolf Loos
Something about this quote really makes sense, sometimes good design means not being noticed.

Telegram from Helsinki

A Telegram from Aalto sent to MIT in 1958
‘Dear John just unable to produce enough architectural philosophy you may publish this telegramletter as a substitute stop Sibelius said if you publish three words of explaining music at least two words are wrong this may be true also in my architectural philosophy stop In ordinary discussion [...]

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