56 Quotes by Louis Kahn

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.

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

Architecture appears for the first time when the sunlight hits a wall.The sunlight did not know what it was before it hit a wall.

Architecture is what nature cannot make.Architecture is something unnatural but not something made up.

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.

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

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.'

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.

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.