Frank Gehry Quotes

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.

Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.

People ask me if I'm an artist or an architect. But I think they're the same.

Your best work is your expression of yourself.

Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstandin g and provide a beautiful context for life's drama.

You can look anywhere and find inspiration.

If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.

I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.

Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? I think I learned that from the artists, from my grandmother, from all the creative people I've spent time with over the years.

In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures.

That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.

I think the biggest problem with 'industrial' architecture is that it's lost its sense of humanity. Minimalist stuff drains all the humanity out of it. That idea works great for the money thing, but it doesn't work great for the feeling thing.

Not every person has the same kinds of talents, so you discover what yours are and work with them.

Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.

Take what comes your way. Do the best with it. Be responsible as you can and something good will happen.

You've got to bumble forward into the unknown.

If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility. It's not fluff. You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.

You have to be optimistic. I still have doubts and conflicts, but the bottom line is, I believe in the future.

The best advice I've received is to be yourself. The best artists do that.

I found the material that people hated the most and used the most. So, I was going and try and see if I could play with it sculpturally.

I refuse to work unless I get paid, so I don't get a lot of work sometimes.

We don't see the banality, but we accept banality. We accept it as inevitable, and it's not.

There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.

Ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.

I know I draw without taking my pen off the page. I just keep going, and that my drawings I think of them as scribbles. I don't think they mean anything to anybody except to me, and then at the end of the day, the end of the project, they wheel out these little drawings and they're damn close to what the finished building is and it's the drawing.