Does it follow that the house has nothing in common with art and is architecture not to be included in the arts? Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument. Everything else that fulfils a function is to be excluded from the domain of art.
When I started studying architecture, people would say, you know, ‘Can you tell me why are all modern buildings so boring?’ Because, like, people had this idea that in the good old days, architecture had, like, ornament and little towers and spires and gargoyles, and today, it just becomes very practical.
Architecture produces a musical mood in our inner being, and we notice that even though the elements of architecture and music appear to be so alien in the outer world, through this musical mood engendered in us, our experience of architecture brings about a reconciliation, a balance between these two elements.
I fought violently for the autonomy of architecture. It’s a very passive, weak profession where people deliver a service. You want a blue door, you get a blue door. You want it to look neo-Spanish, you get neo-Spanish. Architecture with any authenticity represents resistance. Resistance is a good thing.
Architecture is involved with the world, but at the same time it has a certain autonomy. This autonomy cannot be explained in terms of traditional logic because the most interesting parts of the work are non-verbal. They operate within the terms of the work, like any art.
Jobs offshoring began with manufacturing, but the rise of the high-speed Internet made it possible to move offshore tradable professional skills, such as software engineering, information technology, various forms of engineering, architecture, accounting, and even the medical reading of MRIs and CT-Scans.
My guilty pleasure is I like to watch a lot of HGTV. I really like watching design shows about houses, like extreme homes. Like buying a bridge and turning it into a house or something like that. I really am interested in home design or something like that… architecture.
I came to London constantly, working with Ninja Theory on ‘DmC Devil May Cry,’ and I kind of fell in love with this amazing architecture, where you have these buildings that have clearly been around a long time, and they have this amazing gothic look, and then on the first floor, it’s a McDonald’s!
The Classic games were Classic because, like classical music or architecture, they strove to give life and weight to ideals of order and proportion, to provide a vision of timelessness. In ‘Double Dragon,’ we can see the cracks in the brick, the mold growing on the drainage pipes, the unmistakable deterioration of the world we live in.
Architecture is always the will of the age conceived as space – nothing else. Until this simple truth is clearly recognized, the struggle over the foundation of a new architecture confident in its aims and powerful in its impact cannot be realized; until then, it is destined to remain a chaos of uncoordinated forces.
Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it’s changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water’s edge.
Zaha Hadid’s Maxxi Museum is proof that Rome and contemporary architecture are no longer a paradox. The building is characteristic Hadid – with curving lines and organic shapes – and the permanent collection already boasts works by Francesco Clemente, William Kentridge, and Gerhard Richter.
When people are deprived of a sense, their other senses get heightened. If you’re culturally devoid of something – of weather, of artistry, of interesting architecture, all the way down the line to culture itself – you’re either forced to give in and get that car dealership, or you manufacture those things for yourself.
Tuscany is so full of history and beauty – you meet wonders of art and architecture on almost every corner. But I love the region’s homier aspects: the special sweetness of the tomatoes, the soft mozzarella, the heady scents of basil and garlic everywhere.
The body moves through space every day, and in architecture in cities that can be orchestrated. Not in a dictatorial fashion, but in a way of creating options, open-ended sort of personal itineraries within a building. And I see that as akin to cinematography or choreography, where episodic movement, episodic moments, occur in dance and film.
When I was in architecture school, I became curious about the exact mathematics, physics, and construction of the great structures I had been studying. I wanted to know how these amazing things would work: the Pantheon, the dome of Michelangelo, the dome of Brunelleschi. So I decided to study civil engineering.
The architecture for ‘Paladin’ – given that it’s at least three books, with the possibility of more – turned out to be bigger than anything I’ve ever created, with multiple levels of reality, interlocking mysteries and a terabyte of time frame.
There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It’s the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it’s the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.
One my favorite things is to go to the provinces of Russia and see the 18th century wood churches with the onion dome architecture. These humble wonders of incredible imagination of architects that were obviously not living in places like Paris or London, but they’ve created these amazing churches.
Concrete you can mold, you can press it into – after all, you haven’t any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You’d be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line – how marvelous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.
I’d been to Stourhead and was inspired by the perfect parity between architecture and art; in fact, the architecture is the art. I wrote a piece called ‘Not Sculpture Park,’ because most of these things become car parks for bought-in sculpture. The artists should be working with the site, not just plonking pieces down.
People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?
The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.
India – I’ve always felt at home there. Delhi and Mumbai and the Taj Mahal are all incredible – but it’s the people I love. Indians are so interesting and accommodating and friendly. The best hotel I’ve stayed at there is the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur: its architecture is unbelievable.
The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.
