Quotes by Louis Kahn

“Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.”

“Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.”

“A Work of Art... is not a living thing ...that walks or runs.But the making of a life.That which gives you a reaction.To some it is the wonder of Mans Fingers.To some it is the wonder of the Mind.To some it is the wonder of Technique.And to some it is how Real it is.To some, how Transcendent it is.Like the 5th Symphony it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.And you look for it,and though you know it you must hear it again.Though you know it you must see it again.Truly a work of Art is one that tells us, that Nature cannot make what man can make.”

“All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.- Louis Kahn”

Even a brick wants to be something.A brick wants to be something.It aspires. Even a common, ordinary brick... wants to be something more than it is.It wants to be something better than it is.

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.

If people want to see Beaux-Arts, its fine with me. Im interested in good architecture as anybody else.

Architecture struck me between the eye and the eyeball.

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.