Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history. ... Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone. Ada Louise Huxtable More Quotes by Ada Louise Huxtable More Quotes From Ada Louise Huxtable Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world. Ada Louise Huxtable clothes summer love Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed Ada Louise Huxtable cities new-york blow Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line, it is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work. What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before. Ada Louise Huxtable self feelings art The building is a national tragedy - a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried. Ada Louise Huxtable tragedy lying art Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know. The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale — and ultimately it is a gamble — demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world. Ada Louise Huxtable triumph tombstone tragedy Good architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms: efficiency and beauty. Ada Louise Huxtable planning synthesis creative Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind. Ada Louise Huxtable cutting history art What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before. Ada Louise Huxtable style way world In New York, the impact of these concentrated superskyscrapers on street scale and sunlight, on the city's aniquated support systems, circulation, and infrastructure, on its already tenuous livability, overrides any aesthetic. ... Art becomes worthless in a city brutalized by overdevelopment. Ada Louise Huxtable cities new-york art New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur. Ada Louise Huxtable irreverence new-york names One of the most basic human instincts is the need to decorate. Nothing is exempt - the body, the objects one uses, from intimate to monumental, and all personal and ceremonial space. It is an instinct that responds ... to some deep inner urge that has been variously described as the horror of a vacuum and the need to put one's imprint on at least one small segment of the world. Ada Louise Huxtable vacuums clothes space Every creative act draws on the past whether it pretends to or not. It draws on what it knows. There's no such thing, really, as a creative act in a vacuum. Ada Louise Huxtable creativity creative past The perennial architectural debate has always been, and will continue to be, about art versus use, visions versus pragmatism, aesthetics versus social responsibility. In the end, these unavoidable conflicts provide architecture's essential and productive tensions; the tragedy is that so little of it rises above the level imposed by compromise, and that this is the only work most of us see and know. Ada Louise Huxtable vision responsibility art The art of decoration requires the most sophisticated and self-indulgent skills. Its aim has always been to sate the senses as gloriously as possible. ... ornament is not only a source of sensuous pleasure; it supplies a necessary kind of magic to people and places that lack it. More than just a dread of empty spaces has led to the urge to decorate; it is the fear of empty selves. Ada Louise Huxtable skills self art Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style. Ada Louise Huxtable unapologetic style architecture Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death. Waiting is a special kind of activity - if activity is the right word for it - because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives. Ada Louise Huxtable special waiting people In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style. The style of Parisian architecture has been proved and refined by at least three centuries of academic dictates and highly developed taste. There are few violations of this taste, and there is exemplary architectural consistency. Paris has defined the aesthetics of a sophisticated urban culture. Ada Louise Huxtable consistency paris style The skyscraper and the twentieth century are synonymous; the tall building is the landmark of our age. ... Shaper of cities and fortunes, it is the dream, past and present, acknowledged or unacknowledged, of almost every architect. Ada Louise Huxtable cities dream past Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel. Ada Louise Huxtable vocabulary steel stones Clutter in its highest and most organized form is called collecting. Ada Louise Huxtable clutter collecting form
