Louis Kahn Quotations

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A room is not a room without natural light.

Architecture struck me between the eye and the eyeball.

To express is to drive.And when you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature.And there is where Design comes in.And if you think of Brick, for instance,and you say to Brick,""What do you want Brick?""And Brick says to you""I like an Arch.""And if you say to Brick""Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lentil over you. What do you think of that?""""Brick?""Brick says:""... I like an Arch

A Work of Art... is not a living thing ...that walks or runs.But the making of a life.That which gives you a reaction.To some it is the wonder of Man's Fingers.To some it is the wonder of the Mind.To some it is the wonder of Technique.And to some it is how Real it is.To some, how Transcendent it is.Like the 5th Symphony it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.And you look for it,and though you know it you must hear it again.Though you know it you must see it again.Truly a work of Art is one that tells us, that Nature cannot make what man can make.

The crocodile must want to be a crocodile for reasons of the crocodile

I try to create homes, not houses.

You can never learn anything that is not a part of yourself.

The room is the beginning of architecture.

The person of old had the same brilliance of mind that we assume we have now. But that which made a thing become manifest for the first time is our great moment of creative happening.

A Work of Art... is not a living thing ...that walks or runs.But the making of a life.That which gives you a reaction.To some it is the wonder of Man's Fingers.To some it is the wonder of the Mind.To some it is the wonder of Technique.And to some it is how Real it is.To some, how Transcendent it is.Like the 5th Symphony it presents itself.

I just want to make my last demand in reverence to the work of what has been done by architects of the past. what was, has always been. what is, has always been. and what will be, has always been. such is the nature of beginning.

Every building must have... its own soul.

Just think, that man can claim a slice of the sun.

How accidental our existences are, really, and how full of influence by circumstance.

The nature of space reflects what it wants to be.

Thoughts exchanged by one and another are not the same in one room as in another.

I Use The Square To Begin My Solutions Because The Square Is A Non-choice, Really. In The Course Of Development, I Search For The Forces That Would Disprove The Square...

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

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art.

The Sun does not realise how wonderful it is until after a room is made.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space

Even a brick wants to be something

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

Greek architecture taught me that the column is where the light is not, and the space between is where the light is. It is a matter of no-light, light, no-light, light. A column and a column brings light between them. To make a column which grows out of the wall and which makes its own rhythm of no-light, light, no-light, light: that is the marvel of the artist.

A city is the place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.

Also marvelous in a room is the light that comes through the windows of a room and that belongs to the room. The sun does not realize how beautiful it is until after a room is made. A man’s creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of a miracle. Just think, that a man can claim a slice of the sun.

The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.

Even a room which must be dark needs at least a crack of light to know how dark it is.

Architects in planning rooms today have forgotten their faith in natural light. Depending on the touch of a finger to a switch, they are satisfied with static light and forget the endlessly changing qualities of natural light, in which a room is a different room every second of the day.

We are born of light. The seasons are felt through light. We only know the world as it is evoked by light.

I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and material as spent Light. What is made by Light casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

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.