There can be little question that the tall building presents one of the most difficult challenges to the architect. Martin Filler Read Quote
Avant-garde architects have never been able to depend on the support of the establishment, since the customary patrons of this most conservative and slowly moving art form have historically been resistant to innovation and experiment. Martin Filler Read Quote
Any set of decisions about design is inevitably influenced by cultural prejudice, no matter how intent an architect might be to avoid it. Martin Filler Read Quote
Architecture was the last of the major professions to devise a formal ‘cursus honorum’ before its practice could be undertaken. Martin Filler Read Quote
The Frankfurt Museum of Decorative Arts is a handsome building, which takes its cues from the riverside Biedermeier villa next to it, and it is well-integrated into an overall scheme for a group of small museums. Martin Filler Read Quote
Truly great architecture always transcends its stated function, sometimes in unanticipated ways. Martin Filler Read Quote
During the modern period, the vanguard architect has usually relied on small residential jobs both to supply a steady income and to serve as ‘sketches’ for ideas that are often later translated to the larger scale of public commissions. Martin Filler Read Quote
We take from the art of the past what we need. The variable posthumous reputations of even the greatest artists and the unpredictable revivals of interest in even the most obscure ones tend to reveal more about those who make revisionist assessments than about those who are being reassessed. Martin Filler Read Quote
Winning the Pritzker assures a flood of work in one’s seventies and eighties, jobs necessarily carried out by assistants as the demands of modern-day cultural stardom and the inevitable waning of physical capacities prevent many architects from attaining the transcendent final phase more easily achieved by artists in other mediums. Martin Filler Read Quote
