Quotessence
Home / Authors / Keller Easterling

Keller Easterling Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllArchitecturePeopleArchitectKindTryingWorldActionBeautifulDisciplineHabit

Famous Keller Easterling Quotes

“It would never occur to me to map my research against events in my life, and the recent history of globalization seems to be part of someone else's life. Still, maybe I have been trying to fill in a history or address that amnesia for the recent past. There's so much that's opaque about the ways in which extra layers of global governance have developed since Pax Americana and really accelerated in these last thirty, forty years.”

TryingPastExtrasFortyGlobalizationAmnesia
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“Whether railroads or electricity or the Internet, there is always some sense that this is the new, redemptive platform - that finally, finally, we've found the platform that will allow us all to lead a democratic, global existence, where all problems will be solved. And the idea that the old platform becomes obsolete, "this kills that," and so on, also often accompanies the advent of a new technology. The digital platform is no exception.”

ProblemExistenceTechnologyInternetDemocraticExceptionElectricityNew TechnologyAdvent
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“The whole idea of action being a carrier of information is something that comes directly from theater. That's, in some ways, the one thing I've been trying to contribute. I still write things outside of architecture - not really fiction, but not nonfiction. I like dialogue as a form, because the text is only the trace of an action. The consequential information is carried in the action you choose to put on that text.”

WritingTryingActionArchitectureDialogueYou Choose
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“It may be unfathomable in architecture, but it is very practical, or routine, for a person in theater to use action. You have the line, "Come home, son," but you can't play that line by going out and being a mother; you can't be a noun. But you can play to smother your son; you can play to grovel to your son. Again, the real information is carried in action. And, to an annoying degree, theater people talk to each other in infinitive expressions. If you don't have a vivid verb to describe what you're doing, you're probably going to be a pretty bad actress.”

PeopleRealHomeActionMotherSonArchitectureComing HomeAnnoyingBeing A Mother
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“In the context of the kind of infrastructure space I'm looking at, I'm making a very unlikely argument by saying that all the stuff that's repeated, from spatial products to whole cities, which looks so daunting to architects, might be especially empowering. At this moment, it might be harder to make a meaningful object form alone, but easier to make an active form that can piggyback on those multipliers to recondition spaces in a politically significant way.”

KindMomentsArgumentMeaningfulSignificantEmpoweringArchitect
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“I love making object form; I wish I was doing more of it. I admire the research of my colleagues, and sometimes it makes me sad when their beautiful work - the deep dives into formal research and nuances of geometry and so on - ends up circling in more and more circumscribed contexts. I wish they were more powerful. It's not a modern proposition. Active form doesn't kill object form. I want my students to have all those skills related to geometry, shape, measure, scale, etc., plus skills for using space to manipulate power in the world.”

WorldSometimesBeautifulWishPowerfulModernStudentsAdmireManipulateGeometry
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“In architecture, to do anything beyond object form is often treated as something extra-disciplinary - something outside the discipline that has nothing to do with art. So I'm making it clear that this is an artistic choice. It's not everyone's artistic choice. Some people should choose only to make object form because that's what gives them pleasure. But there are people for whom aesthetic pleasure comes from doing something else, and why would you deny that choice? It's another autonomous choice.”

PeopleGivingArtChoicesPleasureDisciplineArchitectureArtisticAesthetic
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“It wasn't an architect who did this, but if it had been an architect, it would have been a good day's work: there was a marketing person who convinced Walmart that their products sold better in daylight than electric light. It would have been interesting if an architect had deliberately designed this change with all its spatial consequences in mind, thinking about how the change would multiply across all the square footage of all the roofs of all the Walmarts in the world. It would have been a beautiful trick - a physical, practical, political pleasure.”

ThinkingWorldMindBeautifulPoliticalPleasureInterestingConsequenceMarketingArchitectElectricRoofGood Day
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“Architects and urbanists are fascinated with cities that are shrinking, like the Rust Belt cities. Or, alternatively, we are fascinated with the growth of favelas and informal settlements. The 2008 financial crisis made these changes more extreme. The subtraction protocols rehearse a way of thinking about multiple properties in counterbalancing interdependence - not just the shaping of one property but the ratcheting interplay between properties.”

ThinkingGrowthCrisisPropertyFinancialArchitectMultipleSettlementInterdependenceFinancial Crisis
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“Rather than asking architecture to be more interdisciplinary - a perennial issue within the discipline - I am suggesting that other disciplines might exploit the powers of architecture and urbanism. When addressing urgent situations, whether it's the depletion of the rainforest or abuse of labor, well-meaning people are working with tools, like standards, that seem like very blunt instruments. I am suggesting that spatial variables that are underexploited in governance might add to that repertoire.”

PeopleSituationDisciplineLaborAbuseArchitectureBlunt
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image

“It's funny how much one learns from context. Throughout that entire visit to Kenya, with all its meetings, there was an experience of the place that taught me things I couldn't learn by reading global newswires. The fact that I learned so much makes me wish that I could visit more places. So many of the zones, of course, are closed, so one knows about them only in secondhand ways. My research has only scratched the surface. There are thousands of zones around the world. There's just so much work to do.”

WorldReadingWishMeetingsZone
Author:Keller Easterling
Create image