71 Quotes by Martin Filler

After Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the belief in decent housing as a political right or social obligation was supplanted in the U.S. by the notion that suitable shelter should be an act of charity.

Before the professionalization of architecture in the nineteenth century, it was standard for an aspiring mason or carpenter to begin his apprenticeship at fourteen and to become a master builder by his early twenties.

Despite the persistent image of the architect as a heroic loner erecting monumental edifices through sheer force of will, the building art has always been a highly cooperative enterprise.

From the outset, MoMA followed the Bauhaus's strict prohibition against design that even hinted at the decorative, a prejudice that skewed the pioneering museum's view of Modernism for decades.

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers's Centre Georges Pompidou of 1971-1977 - the true prototype of the modern museum as popular architectural spectacle - wound up costing so much more than planned that the French government solved the shortfall by cutting support for several regional museums.

As with many other folk beliefs, 'feng-shui' undoubtedly incorporates some scientifically correct observation or received wisdom based on direct experience of natural phenomena; but it needs to be dealt with skeptically as a credible system of thought. Some feng-shui prescriptions can certainly lead to desirable results.

One of the most persistent yet elusive dreams of the Modern Movement in architecture has been prefabrication: industrially made structures that can be assembled at a building site.

The financial benefits of prefabrication have never been as large as its advocates predicted, for although some labor costs can be reduced by machine manufacturing, on-site assembly of any building still depends to some extent on the handwork of skilled craftsmen.

Some museum boards think that choosing an architect can be reduced to a science, but it comes down to a matter of taste, pure and simple. A shortlist of prospective designers speaks volumes about the likely outcome. If the candidates' styles are too divergent, the search committee doesn't know what it wants.