Louis Kahn Quotes

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

- Louis Kahn

You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you, 'I like an arch.' And you say to brick, 'Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.' And then you say: 'What do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: 'I like an arch.'

- Louis Kahn

Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.

- Louis Kahn

Architecture struck me between the eye and the eyeball.

- Louis Kahn

Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

- Louis Kahn

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.

- Louis Kahn

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.

- Louis Kahn

I try to create homes, not houses.

- Louis Kahn

Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.

- Louis Kahn

How precious a book is in light of the offering, in the light of the one who has the privilege of this offering. The library tells you of this offering.

- Louis Kahn

If people want to see Beaux-Arts, it's fine with me. I'm interested in good architecture as anybody else.

- Louis Kahn

A room is not a room without natural light.

- Louis Kahn

In a small room one does not say what one would in a large room.

- Louis Kahn

The street is a room by agreement.

- Louis Kahn

What does a house want to be?

- Louis Kahn

Every building must have... its own soul.

- Louis Kahn

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.

- Louis Kahn