Architecture

FORMS AND DESIGNS
 by Hans Hollein and Walter Pichler
 
"In architecture we are not concerned with beauty. If we want beauty then we want it less in form or proportion than in a sensual beauty of fundamental power.
"The shape of the building doesn't develop out of the material condition of its purpose. A building shall not show it s purpose. It is not an expression of structure and construction, it is not an enclosure or refuge.
"A building is itself.
"Architecture is without purpose.
"What we build will find its usefulness.
"Form does not follow function. Form doesn't originate by itself. It is the great decision of man to make a building into a cube, a pyramid or a sphere.
"Today for the first time in the history of mankind, at this moment when immensely developed science and perfected technology offer the means, we are building what we want, making an architecture that is not determined by technique, but that uses technique - pure, absolute architecture.
Today, man is master over infinite space".
 
Hans Hollein. Translated by Kurt Rheinfurt
 
arts & architecture, August 1963