Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" The Athenians had an oath for someone who was about to become a citizen. They had to swear that 'I shall leave the city not less but more beautiful than I found it.' "

Richard Rogers

Someone

Beautiful

City

Related Quotes:

" Architecture is always political. "

" Architecture is measured against the past; you build in the future, and you try to imagine the future. "

" I love my job. What would I retire to? "

" Of course I know very little about architecture, and the older I get the less I know. "

" A greater focus on design in all new homes would make the best use of land, create homes and public spaces, and reinforce the structures of urban life. "

" You have to modernise; you have to change - you can't just be traditional for the fun of being traditional. "

" I think greed is a critical problem - the gap between the poor and the rich. The gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent. "

" If I remember rightly Holland for instance has something like 45, and it's a much smaller country. In comparison we have very few and they are very badly financed. "

Richard Rogers

Country

Remember

" You know, the environment is fragmenting, and the environment is, in many places, absolutely hideous! "

" I love cities, I spend most of my life talking about cities. And the design of cities does have an effect on your life. You're lucky if you can see trees out of your window and you have a square nearby, or a bar, a cornershop, a surgery. Then you're living well. "

" If you had a carbon tax, you'd have less cars and more bicycles, more people getting around on foot and by public transport. "

" Society has to get a grip and put a tax on carbon. Of course, there is much that flows from that, and it is a complex situation. The small details of something such as climate change are political and social, and they are a lot about fairness and how we rebalance towards a fairer society. "

" I like the idea of trying to influence society by taking a brief, then maybe subtly changing it or looking at it in a new way to see what interesting things can emerge. "

" Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times. "

" My architecture tends to be legible, light and flexible. You can read it. You look at a building, and you can see how it is constructed. I put the structure outside. "

" Family is everything, although I've been fortunate enough to have worked with some of the most amazing minds over the years, including Renzo Piano, John Young, Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour. "

" The gap between the rich and poor is widening fast. "

" I had lots of trouble in school as a child, and I lost confidence. Teachers thought I was stupid. I learned to read very late, when I was 11. Dyslexia wasn't recognized then, and the assumption was you were incapable of thinking. "

" When I started out, nearly every architect I knew was working in public practice; that's where the radical thinking was done. But, there's always a danger of looking back as our fathers did and saying, 'Things were better then.' "

" The one advantage of being dyslexic is that you are never tempted to look back and idealise your childhood. "

" In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It's that contrast we like. "

Richard Rogers

Against

Sit

" I am much more passionate about cities than I am about nations. The competition between cities is more civilised than between nations. There is an understanding there. "

Richard Rogers

I Am

Competition

" I think you could make a completely Virtual Centre, though I have a general feeling, and maybe because I am getting very old, that you still need face to face. "

" Cities are about juxtaposition. In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It's that contrast we like. In Bordeaux, we built law courts right next door to what is effectively a listed historic building, and that makes it exciting. "

" I believe very much in a dialogue between buildings - I believe it's always been there. I think buildings have different identities and live very well next to each other. We always have the shock of the new, and that's fine. The renaissance style is totally different from the medieval, and they have a dialogue across time. "

" I remember my mother taking me to see the Picasso show in the 1940s, and I was impressed by the life and vibrancy of it all. It was a bit too avant-garde for most Londoners at the time, but since then, the city has become a centre for modern culture. "

" Education in British schools isn't good enough. It's not remotely imaginative enough. It lets down too many children, excluding them from society, and, as I've often said, people who are excluded from society tend to express themselves in ways not acceptable to society. "

" Architecture is a slow business, and city planning even slower. "

" Everyone has the right to walk from one end of the city to the other in secure and beautiful spaces. Everybody has the right to go by public transport. Everybody has the right to an unhampered view down their street, not full of railings, signs and rubbish. "

" My parents always told me that nothing was impossible. "