Author

Britain loves a bargain, but you don't get good, lasting architecture on the cheap.

The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it.

I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would really like one. Making sure a shaving mirror in a hotel bathroom is at the right angle. Making bureaucratic buildings that are somehow cheerful.

From David Chipperfield

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.

From David Chipperfield

In Britain, we've tended to replace the kind of architectural culture valued in much of Europe with an in-flight magazine lifestyle - all branding, marketing and 'accessibility', a word that usually means dumbing-down.

From David Chipperfield

I don't think architecture is radical. How can something that takes years and costs millions be radical?

From David Chipperfield

Architecture has curled up in a ball and it's about itself. It has found itself either as a freakshow, where you're not sure if it's good or bad but at least it's interesting, or at the behest of forces of commerce.

From David Chipperfield

The quality of the Neues Museum's construction is extraordinary even by German standards, and people can smell that quality. The concept would not have been so convincing without it.

From David Chipperfield

Most architects work in studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and historical research were irrelevant.

From David Chipperfield

I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called 'FMR,' so we have a common interest in design.

From David Chipperfield

David Chipperfield

Notable Quotes

Authors with Similar Views

Bjarke Ingels

Frank Gehry

I. M. Pei

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Thom Mayne

Authors with Opposing Views

Thom Mayne

Ann Macbeth

Annabelle Selldorf

Arthur Erickson

Chuck Close