Louis Kahn

“What does a house want to be?”

“Every building must have... its own soul.”

“If people want to see Beaux-Arts, it's fine with me. I'm interested in good architecture as anybody else.”

“The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.”

“A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.”

“A room is not a room without natural light.”

“Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.”

“The street is a room by agreement.”

“Architecture struck me between the eye and the eyeball.”

“Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.”

“Even a brick wants to be something.A brick wants to be something.It aspires. Even a common, ordinary brick... wants to be something more than it is.It wants to be something better than it is.”

“In a small room one does not say what one would in a large room.”

“Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.”

“Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.”

“How precious a book is in light of the offering, in the light of the one who has the privilege of this offering. The library tells you of this offering.”

“You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you, 'I like an arch.' And you say to brick, 'Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.' And then you say: 'What do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: 'I like an arch.'”

“I try to create homes, not houses.”

“Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.”