Below are quotes by Paul Rudolph arranged by topic:

On Urban Design:

“Every building, no matter how large or small, is part of the urban design.”

“Urban Design, as opposed to the design of a building, is concerned with the relationship of every element to every other element, so that whole is greater than its parts. It is concerned with the relationship of buildings to each other, the form of the space between the buildings, of solids to voids, of buildings to the ground and to the sky, of internal spaces to the exterior form, of sculpture and painting to the building, and most importantly in our century, the relationship of graphics and paraphernalia embodying every means of transportation.”

“Isolated free-standing buildings, full of well meaning ingenuity, can never add up to a whole which is greater than its parts.”

“One can say that our environment is made up of many elements which need to be organized into ‘places’ which vary as to use and character. In a very real way the ‘sense of place’ develops over a very long time and achieves greatness through the efforts of many generations. We are a young country and an urbanism of our own is just evolving.”

“The fact of the matter is that the greatest urban design always is changing, and is often the product of tearing down portions of complexes to make way for the new. This is the great tradition, not preservation per se.”

“We think of buildings in and of themselves. That isn’t any good at all. That’s not the way it is, not the way it has ever been, not the way it will ever be. Buildings are absolutely and completely dependent on what’s around them.”

“We desperately need to relearn the art of disposing our buildings to create different kinds of space: the quiet, enclosed, isolated, shaded space; the hustling, bustling space, pungent with vitality; the paved, dignified, vast, sumptuous, even awe-inspiring space; the mysterious space; the transition space which defines, separates, and yet joins juxtaposed spaces of contrasting character. We need sequences of space which arouse one’s curiosity, give a sense of anticipation, which beckon and impel us to rush forward to find that releasing space which dominates, which acts as a climax and magnet, and gives direction.”

“This happens to be, I believe, one of the two great weaknesses of 20th Century architecture, that we do not know how to make a city.” (he did not call out the other weakness)

“My definition of urban design is remodeling, adding, subtracting, reworking, relating and reforming three-dimensional spaces for human activities, including all pedestrian and vehicular systems.” - in Jeanne M. Davern. “A Conversation With Paul Rudolph.” Architectural Record, Mar. 1982.

On Architecture:

“Architecture is used space formed to satisfy people’s psychological needs.”

“I want to specifically talk about architecture as an art. That’s the only reason its worthwhile I believe.”

“There’s only one way to understand architecture and that’s to visit buildings.”

“Architecture is never on paper; it’s never any good in models. It’s only built.”

“Every man wants to belong to a “place”; he wants to believe that he is in the most wonderful spot on earth and he takes pride in how and where he spends his time on this earth. Emotion is the most important determinant in architecture.”

“Our domestic interiors are often dominated by storage of mechanical, electronic, entertaining, work-saving devices of all kinds. Since they must be continually replaced, the architectural accommodation influences and often dominates the interior space. Furniture and equipment become architecture.”

“Architecture for me is so all consuming, so mystifying an experience that everything else becomes secondary. I know many architects feel differently and I can understand why. But sometimes they would like to be sociologists, politicians and spiritual leaders - in fact, anything but architects - which annoys me because very often the architecture suffers.” - in J. P. Donlon. “Paul Rudolph Believes in Cities.” Menswear, Dec. 1974.

On Space:

“Architectural space is unique because it consciously molds the environment not only to accommodate humans, but to activate the imagination, as well.”

“Architectural space is similar to the movement of water. It has a velocity, there are cross currents of movement, it surges forward or upward, it can trickle to a standstill, it can be deep and wide, or shallow and still, it can gurgle with the joining of tributaries, it can swirl, leap up or fall precipitously. Water can be photographed; space cannot, except in a duststorm.”

“Used space is for physical activities, unused or waste space is as important, because it nourishes the subconscious. Perhaps it is, paradoxically, the most important of all.”

“Those of you who have experienced a Wright building, or for that matter any first-rate work of architecture, know that the sense of space is immediately present. No one has to tell you or explain to you about it at all.”

“The essential element in architecture is the manipulation of space. It is this essence which separates it from all other arts.”

On Scale:

“Scale, next to space, is the most important tool of the architect.”

“Ornament and texture are tools of scale.”

“The task and opportunity of art is to humanize.”

“Mies van der Rohe understood scale.”

“The scale given by the grid juxtaposed to the solid void so marvelously developed by Le Corbusier gives the three-dimensional idea of the whole which remains unsurpassed.”

“Things are quite chaotic. We are faced with a vast change of scale, new building forms which have not really been investigated, and the compulsions of the automobile. When faced with the truly new, the serious architect must search for solutions equally dramatic.”

On Transportation:

“The imperative of ‘getting around’ has profoundly affected the environment, changing our lives, attitudes, and understanding of our relationship to the earth and each other. The speed of movement has changed our perceptions of scale, distance, and physical relationships.”

“The automobile is not an insulate monster as proclaimed by Lewis Mumford, but an extension of the human spirit which allows him to reach out in numerous unprecedented ways. The automobile is peculiarly private but invades the public rights in ways which can be irritative and even injurious to health. However, it seems to be here to stay.”

“If cars are thought of as outer garments which we shed from time to time, they are their dimensions become more human and should be treated as such.”

“The car is a problem, but in its demands lie great potential for unity, for organization, for new harmony.”

“Le Corbusier abhorred streets. He was wrong.”

On Light:

“Reflected light coming from the wall is the most humane of all light. Since light travels in straight lines, the reflections from the walls come back to you as an individual, putting you in direct contact with the walls themselves. It is almost as if the walls are caressing you with their light. This explains the humanism of reflected light.”

“I found the light in Hong Kong, the reflected light, the play of light on the landscape, one of the most fantastic experience anyone could possibly have.”

On the Design Process and Practice of Architecture:

“One would like to believe in continual progress but it can be a process of going forward and backward. There are certain basic underlying principles which don't change but they get their attention in different ways in various projects”

“Architecture is a personal effort, and the fewer people coming between you and your work the better. … This is a very real problem, and you can only stretch one man so far. The heart can fall right out of a building during the production of working drawings, and sometimes you would not even recognize your own building unless you followed it through.”

“…we tend to build boxes and call them buildings.”

“I think every curve and line has to have real meaning; it cannot be arbitrary.”

“In terms of how one goes about designing anything, you don't really know, or at least I don't know, until after the fact. There are so many elements that come into play that if you wait to figure out what it is you truly want to do once you have a project to work on there won't be enough time. You have to, as I see it, have a reservoir of things that you feel should be done and then you draw on that reservoir and hopefully apply elements from that reservoir in an intelligent fashion. Sometimes it doesn't work that way. Sometimes one is hell-bent for whatever reason to do certain things no matter what. That forcing can lead to obvious problems. You can have one hundred reasons why you do things after the fact. I'm just saying that for me it's a matter of getting your fingers on what you can and cannot do from a legal viewpoint, what it is the owner truly wants to do— but he doesn't necessarily tell you, you have to read between the lines— and what should be done ideally. … You have to know what's possible. Architecture is not a question of the purely theoretical if you're interested in building buildings. It's the art of what is possible.”

“Always, always, always, everything, everything, everything at the beginning. I'm a great believer in the big bang. You cannot isolate parts, ever. That's the reason why it's so important to know as much detail as possible at the very beginning.”

“I can say that in spite of all the rationalizations that architects go through, including myself, you can pay no attention to what architects say, you can only pay attention to what they do. The reason for that is a very real one. I'm compelled: I have no choice about certain combinations of forms, material, space, or architectural considerations. They egg me on. I know what they are, by and large— but not all of them— and I can be very clear about what they are. Now I can't tell you why spiraling space or the movement of space is what is so compelling for me, but it is. I can't tell you why the cantilever, the juxtaposition of forces, and the light and the heavy in terms of structure, is compelling, but it is. I can't tell you why the purposeful placement of architectural elements so that they catch the light in certain ways is compelling, but it is. I can't tell you why certain combinations of handling scale, which is for me second only to space in its importance, is compelling, but it is. I can't tell you why asymmetry as a method of organizing things is so much more compelling than symmetry— I think I've worked on two symmetrical buildings— but it is. ... All I'm really saying is that the most rational architect in the world is not to be trusted at all because there is no such thing as true rationalism when you are speaking of architecture. I can only tell you that I am totally turned off by certain things: the whole of Postmodernism, to start with. I'm equally turned on by certain elements of architecture. I used to wonder about that myself, but now I no longer wonder. I think it's an absolute nature of architecture.”

“Essentially I do what people ask me to do, and I’ve been very lucky in that people have asked me to work on many different kinds of buildings and in many different locations.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.

On Design Criticism:

“I’m pleased that the building touches people, and part of that is that people’s opinions oscillate about it. That’s okay. The worst fate from my viewpoint would be indifference.”

“I am a bit better now than I used to be. I used to be more surprised than I am now.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.

On Inspiration And Originality:

“I think everybody should nourish every last personal idiosyncrasy.”

“Well, I am influenced by everything I see, hear, feel, smell, touch, and so on. The Barcelona Pavilion affected me emotionally. It is one of the great works of art of all time. I could not understand at first why it affected me as it did. I really never liked the outside of it. But the inside of the Pavilion transports you to another world, a more spiritual world.”

“I'm very selective about who I'm interested in. I would go around the world to see a Corbu building or a Wright building. I wouldn't go across the street to see some things. It's really true. I know it sounds terrible, but it's absolutely true. Because I'm interested in feeling and understanding, I learn from traditional architecture; I don't learn from modern architecture by and large. That the reason why I feel really lucky that I've traveled as much as I have.”

"To me, the Barcelona Pavilion is Mies’ greatest building. It is one of the most human buildings I can think of—a rarity in the twentieth century. It is really fascinating to me to see the tentative nature of the Barcelona Pavilion. I am glad that Mies really wasn’t able to make up his mind about a lot of things—alignments in the marble panels, or the mullions, or the joints in the paving. Nothing quite lines up, all for very good reasons. It really humanizes the building.”

On Decoration and Ornamentation:

“Decoration can be thought of as a precious assemblage of selected parts which is poured over the structure in such a manner that the parts adhere to important junctions—the junction of building to base, base to support, support to supported, building to sky and most important, building to user—as manifest at entry and opening.”

“American architecture went through a period wherein much work was organized by regular structural bays. It was inevitable that the desire to vary and decorate the regular bay should come about. This has produced mannerist buildings and points up the limitation of the basic thought. We are now entering I believe another stage wherein the regular way is not the only organized device used.” - in Giulia Veronesi. “Paul Rudolph.” Zodiac, no. 8, 1961.

On Wright and the International Style:

“You must understand that all my life I have been interested in architecture, but the puzzle for me, in many ways, is the relationship of Wright to the International Stylists. Now perhaps for you that seems beside the point, or very, very strange. It has a little bit to do with when you come into this world, and that is when I came to grow. Wright’s interest in structure was, to a degree, a psychological one. I am fascinated by his ability to juxtapose the very heavy, which is probably most clear, almost blatant, too blatant, in Taliesin West with the very, very light tent roof. It isn’t that his structures are so clear, because they are not. It is that he bent the structure to form an appropriate space. He would make piers three times the size that they needed to be in order to make it seem really secure. Or he would make the eave line two or three inches deep by all sorts of shenanigans, from a structural point. My God, what did to achieve that, because he thought it ought to light. I would agree with him in a moment, but the International stylists would not. Well. they did and they didn’t. It was the bad ones who did not. They didn’t know how, didn’t know why.”

On the Principles of Architecture:

“Principles are principles. Principles don’t change. Styles change; attitudes change. Things are in a constant state of flux. The only grasp one can have on the profession is to get a handle on great principles.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.

“One starts with the site, and that is a great principle to react to. Second, the building must work. Third, for lack of a better word, I call the psychology of space. The thing that sets architecture apart is its conquest of architectural space. And by that I really mean how the room feels. It’s the single thing which interests me most about architecture. Unfortunately, it is something which is almost impossible to teach, because you can only imagine it. The fourth principle is structure and materials; the fifth would be architectural scale, and the last one is style. I regard style as unimportant, but having said that, you can not escape where you live. And so it is an influence, the spirit of the times.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.

“Almost 40 years ago, I came to the following conclusions that for me there were 6 principles … the first thing, of course, is the building must work, functionalism.”

“The second thing, that for me is of the utmost importance, is the site or the environment.”

“The third principle for me would be the materials which one builds.”

“One truly functional element of a building may contradict another truly functional element.”

On Architectural Drawings:

“I have reached a point where I hate ‘pretty drawings,’ because it is the idea that is important. I am interested in how people think, and that is what drawing is about. It is a means of assessing what comes directly from the brain to the hand.” - in Tom Porter. Architectural Drawing Masterclass. Studio Vista, 1993.

“It’s much ado about nothing. For me, the preciousness is totally alien to the nature of what an architectural drawing really is.” - in Tom Porter. Architectural Drawing Masterclass. Studio Vista, 1993.

“It would be silly of me to say that I don’t get a certain joy in making them but this is not the real intent. I get turned off when people take them too seriously.” - in Tom Porter. Architectural Drawing Masterclass. Studio Vista, 1993.

“It would be wrong to assume that a single drawing could tell the whole story about a building. In my teaching days, I refused to look at a student project unless I saw it presented in plan, section and elevation and, hopefully, one kind of three-dimensional drawing.” - in Tom Porter. Architectural Drawing Masterclass. Studio Vista, 1993.

“The quality of the drawing has nothing to do with the quality of the architecture. For instance I have drawings that represent a breakthrough in terms of ideas, but which are just awful as drawings. It is all to do with whether or not one has the time and energy at that particular moment and, of course, the quality of the idea.” - in Tom Porter. Architectural Drawing Masterclass. Studio Vista, 1993.

On Landscape:

“I learned a lot from watching him. He had a real feeling for plants and what they would and would not do.” - talking about Russell Page in Linda Yang. “An Architect Raises a ‘Green Mansion’ above the East Side.” New York Times, 06/30/1988.

“I think of plants as another kind of architectural building material.” - in Linda Yang. “An Architect Raises a ‘Green Mansion’ above the East Side.” New York Times, 06/30/1988.

“I love going to nurseries, and wouldn’t dream of letting anyone else select my plants. But I’m interested in form and don’t care if the plants are rare. In any case, I throw the labels away.” - in Linda Yang. “An Architect Raises a ‘Green Mansion’ above the East Side.” New York Times, 06/30/1988.

“I found the tropical foliage most intriguing so I talked the clients into having a lot of gardens.” - talking about his recent work in Asia in Linda Yang. “An Architect Raises a ‘Green Mansion’ above the East Side.” New York Times, 06/30/1988.

“Any architect worth his salt is aware of the landscape. [vertical landscaping serves as the] intermediary between the inside and out. It’s something I feel is most important in the city.” - in Linda Yang. “An Architect Raises a ‘Green Mansion’ above the East Side.” New York Times, 06/30/1988.

“A garden is never finished. I knew where I wanted the solids and voids. In another 20 years I’ll have it.” - talking about his rooftop landscaping at 23 Beekman Place in Linda Yang. “An Architect Raises a ‘Green Mansion’ above the East Side.” New York Times, 06/30/1988.

On Post-Modernism:

“The post-modernists say the want to reinstate decoration (the best modern buildings always included decoration); 'use' history (they are busily rewriting history) and exhort one and all to return to urbanism of the 19th Century (they call it contextualism, which apparently means you can ignore the automobile and embrace eclecticism.” - in Jeanne M. Davern. “A Conversation With Paul Rudolph.” Architectural Record, Mar. 1982.

“It is a reaction which started in the early fifties to modern architecture, is tainted with eclecticism, celebrates ‘pastiche modern,’ and leads to revivalism.” - asked about what he thought of ‘post-modernism’ in Jeanne M. Davern. “A Conversation With Paul Rudolph.” Architectural Record, Mar. 1982.

“I am totally anti-post-modern. I just think it’s a bunch of nonsense. But post-modernism doesn’t affect Southeast Asia: quite the contrary. I’ve totally refused to build post-modern buildings, so thank God there’s Southeast Asia.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.

On Fame & Reputation:

“I have in some ways a great advantage. People think I am dead.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.

“As you probably know, in the 50s and 60s I was a very prominent architect. And now it’s almost like life after death, and I enjoy that fantastically, because I know exactly how fleeting any notions of fame are.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.

“People tell me I’m having a comeback. But I love the idea that people think I’m not doing anything at all. I’ve never worked harder than in the past decade.” - in Susan Cohen. “Paul Rudolph: Long Career and Six Great Principles.” Greenwich News, 19 Jan. 1989.