Organic Architecture Quotes

I really wanted to study with Bruce Goff [one of the masters of "organic architecture"] at the University of Oklahoma.

'Think in simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole to its parts in simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal.

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

The dynamic ideal we call democracy, gradually growing up in the human heart for two-thousand five hundred years, at least, has now every opportunity to found the natural democratic state in these United States of America by way of natural economic order and a natural, or organic, architecture.

So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but-instead-exalting the simple laws of common sense-or of super-sense if you prefer-determining form by way of the nature of materials.

We've been fighting from the beginning for organic architecture. That is, architecture where the whole is to the part as the part is to the whole, and where the nature of materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance becomes a necessity-architecture of democracy.

The space within becomes the reality of the building.

No stream rises higher than its source

If you foolishly ignore beauty, then you will soon find yourself without it.

If you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

No stream rises higher than its source. What ever man might build could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built.

Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

For America today organic architecture interprets (will eventually build) this local embodiment of human freedom. This natural architecture seeks spaciousness, grace and openness; lightness and strength so completely balanced and logical that it is a new integrity.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.