Martin Filler Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

“The role of the architect as artist is an ancient one, but it was de-emphasized with the rise of modernism, which rejected the drawing-based Beaux-Arts tradition in favor of a more technocratic approach.”

“Although there are countless tangents that a career in the building arts can take, it is nonetheless most unusual for a major architectural practice to emerge once a firm's principals are well into what is loosely called middle age.”

“Considering my specialization in architecture, I'm not surprised that the first graphic novel to thoroughly engage, not to say captivate, me is Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor's 'Batman: Death by Design.'”

“One reason I've never been a fan of graphic novels is because a central aspect of literature for me has always been imagining what the things I'm reading about look like.”

“The form a city assumes as it evolves over time owes more to large-scale works of civil engineering - what we now call infrastructure - than almost any other factor save topography.”

“There can be little question that the tall building presents one of the most difficult challenges to the architect.”

“Some museum boards think that choosing an architect can be reduced to a science, but it comes down to a matter of taste, pure and simple. A shortlist of prospective designers speaks volumes about the likely outcome. If the candidates' styles are too divergent, the search committee doesn't know what it wants.”

“Always beware an unsigned architectural design.”

“The first half of the 1960s was the apogee of what might be termed the Age of Cool - as defined by that quality of being simultaneously with-it and disengaged, in control but nonchalant, knowing but ironically self-aware, and above all inscrutably undemonstrative.”

“Before World War II, Modernist architects sometimes had to resort to custom fabrication or outright fakery to achieve the machine imagery advocated by the Bauhaus after its initial, Expressionist, phase. Stucco masqueraded as reinforced concrete; rivets were used for decoration.”