71 Quotes by Martin Filler

All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial.

Architecture traditionally has been the slowest of art forms. It was not unusual for great cathedrals to take centuries to complete, with stylistic changes from Romanesque to Gothic or Renaissance to Baroque as common as the addition of chapels or spires. But because the function remained the same, the form could be flexible and its growth organic.

Avant-garde architects have never been able to depend on the support of the establishment, since the customary patrons of this most conservative and slowly moving art form have historically been resistant to innovation and experiment.

There is no sadder tale in the annals of architecture than the virtual disappearance of the defining architectural form of the Modern Movement - publicly sponsored housing.

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.

One of the Age of Enlightenment’s most hypnotic images is Ledoux’s rendering of his neoclassical theater of 1775 – 1784 in Besancon, surreally reflected in the colossal eye of an unidentified cosmic being.

Considering my specialization in architecture, I’m not surprised that the first graphic novel to thoroughly engage, not to say captivate, me is Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor’s ‘Batman: Death by Design.’

Architectural kitsch is most common in the commercial pop vernacular – typified by the Big Duck of 1931 in Flanders, New York, a Long Island roadside poultry stand resembling a duck, which Venturi and Scott Brown made a cult object through their writings.

There is no sadder tale in the annals of architecture than the virtual disappearance of the defining architectural form of the Modern Movement – publicly sponsored housing.