#architecture

Nothing truly beautiful without its element of strangeness, nothing whole without its own incongruity, these (Jacksonville-area pioneer house) ruins sand up from the earth in sacred conjunction. These ruins conjoin the earth and the manmade, moving from one to the other and back again. The Browards built their house out of shell and limestone, and limestone forms naturally from the shells and skeletons of miniscule sea creatures over great periods of time. The Browards shaped the earth upright toward the sky. THey shaped it with doorframes and windows and chimneys. THey shaped the earth up around them as a shelter. But shaped earth was always the earth. Now the walls fall back down and join once again the ground, taken over by roots of ferns and weeds and small trees. The house was always the ground, only contained in an upward suspension. The house was always the earth, but brought up into architecture, and now the house that was always the earth crumbles back into the earth and nourishes new green things -- dog fennel and morning glories and palmettoes and cabbage palms and cedars. A true symbol of sacredness of the earth is earth's reclaiming of human ingenuity. ↗

— Tim Gilmore

#ghost-stories #local-history #paranormal #architecture

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#library #architecture

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it). ↗

— Alain de Botton

#buildings #museums #architecture

Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator. ↗

— Antonio Gaudi

#collaborate #creator #laws #look #nature

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. ↗

— Frank Gehry

#place #should #speak #time #timelessness

Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city. ↗

— Frank Gehry

#city #each #happen #i #i think

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. ↗

— John Irving

#building #craft #i #never #novel

Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science. ↗

— Larry Wall

#architecture #came #coming #computer #computer science

Doctrines provide an architecture for both Republican and Democrat presidents to carry out policies. ↗

— Malcolm Wallop

#both #carry #democrat #doctrines #out

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site. ↗

— Frank Lloyd Wright

#architect #bar #board #drafting #eraser