Frank Gehry Quotes

“A lot of people don't get it, but I design from the inside out so that the finished product looks inevitable somehow. I think it's important to create spaces that people like to be in, that are humanistic.”

“A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff – mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books.”

“An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art – or at least people call it that.”

“And I realized, when I'd come in to the meetings with these corrugated metal and chain link stuff, and people would just look at me like I'd just landed from Mars. But I couldn't do anything else. That was my response to the people and the time.”

“Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place, and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.”

“Architecture is a service business. An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art – or at least people call it that.”

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

“Bilbao opened in 1997. It was only ten years later that I was asked to do another museum. A lot of other people got work because of Bilbao.”

“Chicago's one of the rare places where architecture is more visible.”

“Democracy, obviously, is something we don't want to give up, but it does create chaos. It means the guy next door can do what he wants, and it creates a collision of thinking. In cities, that means people build whatever they want.”

“Each project, I suffer like I'm starting over again in life. There's a lot of healthy insecurity that fuels this stuff.”

“For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.”

“Green issues have been used as a marketing tool. Sometimes these green claims are completely meaningless.”

“I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did, and I get the sweats, I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going.”

“I can't just decide myself what's being built. Someone decides what they want, then I work for them.”

“I don't know how to overcome this perception that I'm extravagant.”

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

“I don't make things with my hands, although I studied woodworking and made furniture.”

“I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.”

“I don't want to do architecture that's dry and dull.”

“I have always thought that L.A. is a motor city that developed linear downtowns.”

“I make a model of the site. There are some obvious things: where the entrance should be, where the cars have to go in. You start to get the scale of it. You understand the client's needs, and what the client is hoping for and yearning for.”

“I never said I was opposed to the LEED program or to green building – I'm not.”

“I promised a lot of people I'd slow down when I turned 80.”

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

“I think my attitudes about the past are very traditional. You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.”

“I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.”

“I used to sketch – that's the way I thought out loud. Then they made a book of my sketches, and I got self-conscious, so now I don't do it much.”

“I was in Peru and visited a building near Lima built by the Incas. It was low in height, with no windows at all, but all the way in the back there was air movement. And I couldn't figure out how they'd done it; it was incredible.”

“I work from the inside out.”