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Thursday, January 24, 2013

life lessons that are priceless – architects



«… if you asked a leading architect for an apple he would sharpen his pencils, draw an orchard and charge you twenty grand. And that would probably still only get you to the planning stage. An expensive architect will save you the most money, but the only way to ever save money is by spending more money than you wanted to in the first place, so any kind of architect is always the start of a slippery slope.»

All Cheeses Great and Small – A Life Less Blurry, Alex James


«An architect is said to be a man who knows very little about a great deal and keeps knowing less and less about more and more until he knows practically nothing about everything, whereas on the other hand an engineer is a man who knows a great deal about very little and who goes along knowing more and more about less and less until finally he knows practically everything about nothing. A contractor starts out knowing everything about everything, but ends up knowing nothing about about anything, due to his association with architects and engineers.»

Doug Oldham, of Oldham Hirst Design


«Mies aimed expensively for perfection. He had the welds in the steel ground down, and joints in the stone paving made exceptionally fine. […] His obsessiveness made the house beautiful, but like a tomb it is happier if its resident doesn't make her presence felt. Faithful to the contempt for comfort shown by Taut and his allies, Mies designed a house that would overheat, steam up in the cold, and – as he fought against spoiling it with mosquito nets – become infested with insects. […] Now it is uninhabited and can be visited by arranged tour.»

Rowan Moore on the Farnsworth House, in Why We Build

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