Guimard brought Nature and Art into the very heart of the modern city. ibid.
The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. Salvador Dali
A monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend. Prince Charles, re proposed extension to National Gallery
A large number of us have developed a feeling that architects tend to design houses for the approval of fellow architects and critics, not for the tenants. Prince Charles
Robert Adam who promptly took neo-classicism back to Britain and churned out country houses more suitable to Mount Olympus than to Oxfordshire. James Burke, Connections s2e6, Echoes of the Past, BBC 1994
Famed for its almost perfect symmetry. Known the world over as the symbol of India ... Yet the identity of the architect is one of the monument’s greatest mysteries. Mystery Files: Taj Mahal, National Geographic 2011
The Taj Mahal is perhaps one of the most public declarations of lost love ever seen. But the myth has it the Shah is not yet finished: he plans a second monument across the Jumna River ... The legend of the Black Taj. ibid.
The midnight garden and pool complete the Taj Mahal complex. ibid.
Frei Otto started something of a revolution in architecture. The sweeping curves of the Olympic Stadium are echoed in countless modern structures. Professor Marcus du Sautoy, The Code II: Shapes, BBC 2011
[Filippo] Brunelleschi ... a maverick architect ... Brunelleschi’s vision would resurrect forgotten concepts of the past. Empires Special: Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance: Birth of a Dynasty, PBS 2004
He would have to re-write the rules of Western architecture. ibid.
Brunelleschi also tried to escape the limitations of his age. ibid.
Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect’s task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise. Adolf Loos
Burj Dubai is one of several pinnacles in the novel architectural movement that I call Emirates futurism, and which expats call the Master Plan of Sheikh Mo (a cheeky, if endearing, reference to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's enlightened despot). Misha Glenny, McMafia
One of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs created this impossibly vast monument to himself at Abu Simbel … The largest temple ever carved out of solid rock. Ancient Impossible s1e2: Monster Monuments, 2014
A 2000-year-old concrete dome found in the centre of Rome – it’s called the Pantheon … ibid.
The Egyptians built more than a hundred pyramids across their kingdom. ibid.
It covers over sixty thousand square feet and consists of a hundred and thirty-four columns in sixteen rows; most of them are fifty feet high. The twelve central columns stand an incredible eighty feet tall. The Hall is one of the greatest achievements of ancient Egyptian engineering. Ramesses the Great
Zaha Hadid: an architect whose buildings defy classification and even gravity. Imagine … Zaha Hadid: Who Dares Wins, BBC 2016
Cities have the capacity of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, Jane Jacobs, author The Death and Life of Great American Cities, BBC 2017
In opposition to the homogenising clarity of [Robert] Moses was Jane Jacobs. ibid. expert
We didn’t understand how high the price was. ibid. expert
I just loved coming to New York. It was inexhaustible. Just to walk around its streets and wonder at it. So many streets different. So many neighbourhoods different. So much going on. ibid. Jane Jacobs
Marvels of dullness and regimentation … This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities. ibid. Jacobs
It’s all a great network in the city. ibid.
Many different kinds of enterprises, many different kinds of people, mutually supporting and supplementing each other. ibid.
In 1956 a gauche young man appeared on BBC television to warn us about the soulless destruction of Britain by post-war planners. Over the next two decades the gauche young man turned into an angrier older travelling man. The Man Who Fought the Planners: The Story of Ian Nairn, BBC 2017
Ian Nairn’s appearances on television were by turns passionate, angry and indignant, pleading and towards the end of his tragically short life full of disappointment and quiet despair. ibid.
Outrage was his deadly weapon. ibid.
Nairn’s London quickly became a bible for architecture lovers. ibid.
‘The beauty underneath the grime, but not just the beauty of the buildings but the beauty of the communities that lived in those buildings.’ ibid.
For Ian absolutely crucial to community life was the pub. ibid.
Art is a fragile thing. On 23rd May 2014 the Glasgow School of Art was grievously damaged by fire. The building was the inspired creation of the Scottish artist and architect Charles Rene Mackintosh. His library, one of the most beautiful rooms ever designed, was lost to the flames, savaged, cremated, gone. Four years later, unbelievably, the fire returned. Mackintosh: Glasgow’s Neglected Genius, BBC 2018
One of the most important buildings in the world. ibid.
In the 1960s his work festered in derelict buildings. ibid.
There was something about the design madness that everyday Glasgow loved. ibid.
The Mackintosh look, the emerging Glasgow style, found favour with a rebellious group of artists on the other side of Europe – they were called the Secessionists. ibid.
An uncompromising genius – a man who could be a nightmare to work with. ibid.
A roof terrace, a primary school with a paddling pool, a movie screen made of concrete, a sports hall; inside corridors that stretch one hundred and fifty metres, 337 apartments for 1,600 residents under one roof. The Bauhaus Spirit, Sky Arts 2019
The twentieth century was rich in visions of utopia and better societies. The questions was, How to build a new world. And who could build it. ibid.
It was first and foremost a school: a campus home for Utopians, inventors and dreamers. ibid.
‘This kind of interdisciplinary thinking and working.’ ibid.
The Bauhaus moved far away from its Arts & Crafts room, and with this building it jumped straight into the industrial movement. ibid.
Now it was time for large apartment buildings. ibid.
Modern architecture from Europe lived on in the international style of New World cities. ibid.
‘First they had to improve buildings, then the city had to be viewed globally. The most famous congress was when a group travelled by boat from Marseilles to Athens: Walter Gropius Le Corbusier, Miles van der Rohe. Together, these modernists developed the idea of a charter which was intended to be a guide for urban planners.’ ibid. dude
100 years ago, an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100, captions, BBC 2019
The Bauhaus was the first truly revolutionary design movement. It’s a movement that only existed for fourteen years and yet it had a kind of worldwide impact. ibid. Michelle Ogundehin
The Bauhaus was the brainchild of Walter Gropius who created the school and became its first director, and is now considered one of the greatest architects and educators of the twentieth century. ibid.
Gropius now produced a manifesto, a kind of mission statement in which he outlined his vision. At the Bauhaus all the disciplines would come together to create what he considered to be the pinnacle of artistic achievement: a building. ibid.
August 1923 marked the opening of the first great Bauhaus exhibition. ibid.
‘Nazis go into the building and throw furniture out the window. There’s talk of burning the building down.’ ibid. art lady
In the north of England we used to build in solid brick and stone. Today we clad in glass in steel: this is Liverpool I. The city fathers had delivered unto the people of Liverpool the biggest city-centre shopping development outside London. In fact since the end of the Second World War these 42 acres will only ever be shops, temples rising to the sky to celebrate the new gods: the big brands. But once upon a time when the North built, the world looked on and applauded. The city fathers then had different ideas of how architecture could contribute to the shape of their cities and improve the lives of their citizens. By lining the streets, not with temples to the gods of commerce, but buildings that expressed the grandeur and the nobility of a great civilisation. Those who gave Liverpool its architectural treasures would inspire other city fathers rights across the north of England. The civic buildings they created would transform the industrial towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and revolutionise urban landscapes for decades to come. Jonathan Foyle, People’s Palaces: The Golden Age of Civic Architecture I: Neo-Classical, BBC 2020