I tell you, it is easier to build a grand opera or a city center than to build a personal house.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.
No architect troubled to design houses that suited people who were to live in them, because that would have meant building a whole range of different houses. It was far cheaper and, above all, timesaving to make them identical.
My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn't impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place.
Some architects, such as John Lautner, never really did anything other than houses. His entire portfolio is basically residential. There's nothing wrong with that.
You don't make houses cheaper by making them more expensive to build.
Building a house is like producing a movie. There's no right way to do it but a lot of wrong ways. You have to be flexible and creative. You have to move fast, be prepared - or it quickly becomes costly.
What isn't for everybody shouldn't be for anybody: the world's opera houses are the reasons we have cardboard cities.
Building your own home is about desire, fantasy. But it's achievable; anyone can do it.
For me, the excitement in architecture revolves around the idea and the phenomenon of the experience of that idea. Residences offer almost immediate gratification. You can shape space, light, and materials to a degree that you sometimes can't in larger projects.
Building your own house is a primal urge, one of those universal genetic drives like the need to provide for your family.