The New York Hilton is laid out with a competence that would make a computer blush. Ada Louise Huxtable More Quotes by Ada Louise Huxtable More Quotes From Ada Louise Huxtable the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. ... At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style. Ada Louise Huxtable unbearable style goes-on Surrogate experience and surrogate environments have become the American way of life. Distinctions are no longer made, or deemed necessary, between the real and the false; the edge usually goes to the latter, as an improved version with defects corrected - accessible and user-friendly. Ada Louise Huxtable real friendly way Every generation tailors history to its taste. Ada Louise Huxtable tailors generations history 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 embellishment inability enough Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station. Ada Louise Huxtable obsolete railroads today No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington. Ada Louise Huxtable matter home may If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers. Ada Louise Huxtable british shopping united-states Because it is a national landmark, there is only one way to judge the Kennedy Center - against the established standard of progressive and innovative excellence in architectural design that this country is known and admired for internationally. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Center not only does not achieve this standard of innovative excellence; it also did not seek it. The architect opted for something ambiguously called 'timelessness' and produced meaninglessness. It is to the Washington manner born. Too bad, since there is so much of it. Ada Louise Huxtable design judging country An excellent job with a dubious undertaking, which is like saying it would be great if it wasn't awful. Ada Louise Huxtable dubious would-be jobs Real serious waiting is done in waiting rooms, and what they all have in common is their purpose, or purposelessness, if you will; they are places for doing nothing and they have no life of their own. ... their one constant is what might be called a decorative rigor mortis. Ada Louise Huxtable waiting-rooms rigor-mortis real All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice. Ada Louise Huxtable agency practice self Really living without clutter takes an iron will ... This involves eternal watchfulness and that oldest and most relentless of the housewife's occupations, picking up. I have a feeling that picking up will go on long after ways have been found to circumvent death and taxes. Ada Louise Huxtable iron feelings long Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man. That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump. Ada Louise Huxtable style dream men There are two kinds of people in the world - those who have a horror of a vacuum and those with a horror of the things that fill it. Translated into domestic interiors, this means people who live with, and without, clutter. Ada Louise Huxtable two mean people Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet. Ada Louise Huxtable strong civilization art Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake. Ada Louise Huxtable california fake real Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks. Ada Louise Huxtable endless palaces clerks Real estate is the closest thing to the proverbial pot of gold. Ada Louise Huxtable real gold pot A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination. Ada Louise Huxtable marble disaster imagination Some people wait constructively; they read or knit. I have watched some truly appalling pieces of needlework take form. Others - I am one of them - abandon all thought and purpose to an uneasy vegetative states. Ada Louise Huxtable purpose waiting people
