Designers

"Our family are an alternate stratification of poetry and mathematics."

"Circumstances have been such, that I have lived almost entirely secluded for some time. Those who are much in earnest and with single minds devoted to any great object in life, must find this occasionally inevitable.... You will wonder at having heard nothing from me; but you have experience and candour enough to perceive and know that God has not given to us (in this state of existence) more than very limited powers of expression of one's ideas and feelings... I shall be very desirous of again seeing you. You know what that means from me, and that it is no form, but the simple expression and result of the respect and attraction I feel for a mind that ventures to read direct in God's own book, and not merely thro' man's translation of that same vast and mighty work."

"We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves."

"Perhaps you have felt already, from the tone of my letter, that I am more than ever now the bride of science. Religion to me is science, and science is religion. In that deeply-felt truth lies the secret of my intense devotion to the reading of God's natural works. It is reading Him. His will — His intelligence; and this again is learning to obey and to follow (to the best of our power) that will! For he who reads, who interprets the Divinity with a true and simple heart, then obeys and submits in acts and feelings as by an impupulse and instinct. He can't help doing so. At least, it appears so to me."

"[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. … Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

"There is, however, one car company that has never lost sight of its role in the marketplace. Rolls-Royce. Sir Henry Royce, who founded the company back in 1904, really was a one-man quote machine. "Strive for perfection in everything you do." "Accept nothing as nearly right or good enough." "The quality remains long after the price is forgotten." "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.""

"One respected critic described the 40/50 hp as being "a triumph of workmanship over design" — a cruel but not wholly inaccurate assessment. The meticulous quality of engineering insisted upon by the perfectionist Henry Royce was what established the marque's reputation."

"Strive for perfection in everything we do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough."

"Small things make perfection, but perfection is no small thing … Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble."

"The quality will remain long after the price is forgotten."

"I have only one regret … that I have not worked harder."

"I like to find things from unexpected sources. I tend to move between turtlenecks and shirts and ties. I don't really have a uniform in the sense that some people might."

"[A man every day should do] probably self-assess. Do I do it religiously? Not consciously, but I like to think that in one form or another I do question, yes. I would be being pretentious and untruthful if I said that I devote a bit of time just for introspection and consciously do that, but in one form or another I suspect I do. And if I don't, I think it would be a good thing to do anyway."

"The most amazing lesson in aerodynamics I ever had was the day I climbed a thermal in a glider at the same time as an eagle. I witnessed, close up, effortlessness and lightness combined with strength, precision and determination."

"[Makes a good architect] an open mind, energy, an appetite for hard work, a willingness to explore new solutions and push boundaries. A sense of humor is also helpful."

"Part of the art of being an architect is to be a good listener. But I also believe in always providing strong leadership. Something that is designed by committee, in the end, tends to be compromised."

"I'm amazed to be here still and doing all this. But then I look at Oscar Niemeyer in Rio, who was a hero of mine when I was a student at Manchester. Oscar's still busy at work at 102, so there's hope. In any case, I just wouldn't know how to stop."

"Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together."

"What is more real and tangible within an artificial space than brick?"

"It's not possible to define a style in my work. If you're designing an airport, then aeroplanes are important. It's no more complicated to design a museum. I prefer museums for my personal passion – the art."

"Raggi: Has the fact that you are a woman been a crucial influence in your work? Aulenti: Yes."

"When you're criticized for something, it's best to wait two or three years and see."

"The conscious principle in this design has been to achieve forms that could create experiences, and that could at the same time welcome everyone's experiences with the serenity of an effortless development."

"Aulenti views architecture as a concrete, untouchable entity that uses the city as its form generator. She sees architecture in terms of its relationship to the urban environment. In her designs, she blends the private with the public to generate architectural forms and spatial relationships."

"Advice to whoever asks me how to make a home is to not have anything, just a few shelves for books, some pillows to sit on. And then, to take a stand against the ephemeral, against passing trends [...] and to return to lasting values."

"There are plenty of other talented female architects, but most of them seem to link up with men [...] I've always worked for myself, and it's been quite an education. Women in architecture must not think of themselves as a minority, because the minute you do, you become paralyzed. It is important to never create the problem."

"I am convinced that architecture is tied to the polis, it is an art of the city, of the foundation, and as such it is necessarily related and conditioned by the context in which it is born. Place, time, and culture create that architecture, instead of another."

"Light is impressionism."

"My wife is a painter, and a very good one... and we’ve been working together for, oh, twelve years now, I guess...and at first I used to help and criticize things she was doing, and then she would help and criticize things I was doing, and we would... pitch in and do all the jiggering for each other and get it as people do... and then, gradually, things begin to sort of, you know, entropy... things began to get shuffled, and pretty soon you didn’t know, sort of, where one started and the other ended, and anything that we’ve looked at or talked about here, you know, I say that I’m doing it, but actually, she’s doing it just as much as I am, only she sort of goes under the same corporate type name..."

"He was almost the first artist I ever knew... He used to give the quaintest little tea-parties in his bare bachelor chambers, all very dowdy, but the meal served in beaten gold, the cream poured out of a single onyx, and the tea structured in its descent on account of real rubies inside the pot. He was much blinder than any near-sighted man I ever knew, and once, when with me in the country, mistook a peacock seen en face for a man. His work was really more jewel-work than architecture, just because he was so blind, but he had real genius, I am sure."

"There is a babyish party named Burges"

"Nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a veiy good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clu^ny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepulchre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off" their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration."

"The great feature of our medieval chamber is the furniture ; this, in a rich apartment, would be covered with paintings, both ornaments and subjects; it not only did its duty as furniture, but spoke and told a story."

"We have no architecture to work from at all; indeed, we have not even settled the point de depart... our art... is domestic, and... the best way of advancing its progress is to do our best in our own houses... if we once manage to obtain a large amount of art and colour in our sitting-rooms... the improvement may gradually extend to our costume, and perhaps eventually to the architecture of our houses."

"The thirteenth century, in particular, was Burges’s chosen field, and he modelled his style of draughtsmanship on the famous sketchbook of in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris."

"Since the great French Revolution all colour has been gradually dying out of the male costume, until we have got reduced to our present gamut of brown, black and neutral tint; which, combined with the chimney-pot hat and the swallow-tailed coat, form a costume by no means particularly adapted to refresh the eye seeking for form or colour."

"Allowing, therefore, the great usefulness of the Government Schools, the Exhibitions, and the Museums both public and private, the question now arises as to what are the impediments to our future progress. The principal ones appear to me to be three."

"At present the fashion appears to have set in in favour of two very distinct styles. One is a very impure and bastard Italian, which is used in most large secular buildings; and the other is a variety of the architecture of the thirteenth century, often, I am sorry to say, not much purer than its rival, especially in the domestic examples, although its use is principally confined to ecclesiastical edifices. It is needless to say that the details of these two styles are as different from each other as light from darkness, but still we are expected to master both of them. But it is most sincerely to be hoped that in course of time one or both of them will disappear, and that we may get something of our own of which we need not be ashamed. This may, perhaps, take place in the twentieth century, it certainly, as far as I can see, will not occur in the nineteenth."

"The real mission of machinery is to reduce pounds to shillings and shillings to pence."

"Pugin says in one of his works that had he a cathedral to build, one of the first things he would do would be to set up a to turn the smaller columns."

"Of course there is no prima facie reason why cheap things should be ugly, for a die or mould of a good design costs no more than a bad one; but still the fact remains that the objects in use in every-day life are not beautiful, and it is to effect a change in this respect that the Government have established Schools of Design and the excellent Museum of which I shall have to speak hereafter."

"It has been well observed that the world, more especially the English portion of it, during the last half century, has been in its working dress; that is to say, although we have done some very wonderful things in the way of mechanics, and have produced other things which are marvels of cheapness, yet as regards the production of really beautiful objects, particularly those required in every-day life, we have been behind most other epochs of civilization."

"Great praise must also be given to the Society of Arts for beginning the movement and carrying it on to the present time; and although the sphere of its action must necessarily be infinitely smaller than that of the Government Schools, yet we should always remember that the initiative of our great English exhibitions of industry came from the Society, and that it is to those exhibitions that we owe the stirring among the dry bones of industrial art which is now taking place."

"Decidedly the best application of art to industry is when a great many copies are made from an exceedingly good pattern."

"I have been brought up in the 13th century belief, and in that belief I intend to die."

"There are two great uses of antiquarian studies. One of them is to enable us to conjure up as if by the magician's wand the dress, furniture, architecture, &c., of past ages, so that we can live, as it were, in many centuries almost at the same moment. This is a very great and a very pleasant species of knowledge, but it is not particularly useful in this work-a-day world; and it sometimes, like other knowledge, renders its possessor far from happy, more especially when he goes to the theatre, and sees all sorts of anachronisms and impossibilities a. The other use of antiquarian studies is to restore disused arts, and to get all the good we can out of them for our own improvement."

"I have never been forced to accept compromises but I have willingly accepted constraints."

"The civil engineer is the real 19th century architect."

"If we copy, the thing never looks right [and] the same occurs with regard to those buildings which do not profess to be copies; both they and the copies want spirit. They are dead bodies... We are at our wits."

"What I set myself to do was this, to write a sort of grammar of thirteenth-century architecture, and to illustrate it with carefully measured details. I moreover resolved, when I did measure details or buildings, to do the part I wanted, and not to waste time by trying to make a finished drawing by means of the surroundings. The plan of the book fell through, for I had scarcely been at work two months before the advertisement of M. Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary appeared, and I then continued tho drawings for my own instruction and without any intention of publication."