#buildings

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#home #identity #architecture

Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the shadows - the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base of this dreadful masterpiece. ↗

— Ernie Pyle

#base #below #bridges #buildings #dark

The proportions, too, in which the capital that is to support labour, and the capital that is invested in tools, machinery and buildings, may be variously combined. ↗

— David Ricardo

#capital #combined #invested #labour #machinery

In every area of the world where there is earthquake risk, there are still many buildings of this type; it is very frustrating to try to get rid of them. ↗

— Charles Francis Richter

#buildings #earthquake #every #frustrating #get

With buildering, I get to keep that element of danger. Plus, I very much like the feeling of height, and buildings have even more of a feeling of height than rock faces. ↗

— Alain Robert

#danger #element #even #faces #feeling

If there were a major earthquake in Los Angeles, with bridges and highways and railroads and airports all shut down and huge buildings collapsing, I don't care how much planning you do, the first 72 hours is going to be chaotic. ↗

— Warren Rudman

#bridges #buildings #care #chaotic #collapsing

A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn’t see how. Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald. ↗

— Jon Ronson

#buildings #cadaver #humor #oppression #oppressive

I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings for their own sake or a still life or anything like that. ↗

— Ben Shahn

#anything #buildings #did #doing #i

But now I know that it is very important that all buildings should be consistent, that this is the quality of the Gothic cathedral, for instance, that we like. ↗

— Minoru Yamasaki

#cathedral #consistent #gothic #i #important

He didn't like religion, hadn't liked it for years, but he adored churches, loved them like old scientific instruments whose time is long past but are nevertheless fascinating and strange. ↗

— Bruce Robinson

#architecture #atheism #buildings #churches #religion