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Ada Louise Huxtable

Ada Louise Huxtable Quotes

Architectural Critic

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Famous Ada Louise Huxtable Quotes

“The perennial architectural debate has always been, and will continue to be, about art versus use, visions versus pragmatism, aesthetics versus social responsibility. In the end, these unavoidable conflicts provide architecture's essential and productive tensions; the tragedy is that so little of it rises above the level imposed by compromise, and that this is the only work most of us see and know.”

KnowsLittlesArtEndsUseSocialLevelsResponsibilityVisionConflictEssentialsTragedyArchitectureDebateCompromiseTensionProductiveSocial ResponsibilityVersusRise AboveAestheticsPragmatism
Book:On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change
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“In New York, the impact of these concentrated superskyscrapers on street scale and sunlight, on the city's aniquated support systems, circulation, and infrastructure, on its already tenuous livability, overrides any aesthetic. ... Art becomes worthless in a city brutalized by overdevelopment.”

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Book:The tall building artistically reconsidered: the search for a skyscraper style
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“Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.”

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Book:The tall building artistically reconsidered: the search for a skyscraper style
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“The art of decoration requires the most sophisticated and self-indulgent skills. Its aim has always been to sate the senses as gloriously as possible. ... ornament is not only a source of sensuous pleasure; it supplies a necessary kind of magic to people and places that lack it. More than just a dread of empty spaces has led to the urge to decorate; it is the fear of empty selves.”

PeopleKindArtSelfSpacePleasureMagicSourceSkillsEmptyAimSensesUrgesDreadSophisticatedSuppliesOrnamentsDecorationEmpty SpaceSensuousSelf Indulgent
Book:ARCHITECTURE, ANYONE?
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“Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line, it is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work. What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.”

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Author:Ada Louise Huxtable
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