It's important for people who criticise architects - whether what they build is or isn't to your taste - to appreciate how they devote themselves and put everything into bringing a building into existence.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.
To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.
The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.
Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise.
Architects feel empowered to give opinions about politics and sociology and philosophy without knowing much about it. Kind of in the same way that they think they can design furniture or fashion or utensils for dining.
Architecture is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that's all.
If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.
Architecture is the story of how we see ourselves. It is the architect's job to service everyday life.
You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.
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.