Will Johnson
Will Johnson
spiritual religious inspiration
The practice of architecture is the most delightful of all pursuits. Also, next to agriculture, it is the most necessary to man. One must eat, one must have shelter. Next to religious worship itself, it is the spiritual handmaiden of our deepest convictions.
believe rivers steps
Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.
giving trying world
You're going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You'll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead.
pride people corporations
The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.
sex age desire
To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own.
art architecture
Architecture is art, nothing else.
cities architecture automobile
The automobile is the greatest catastrophe in the entire history of City architecture.
glasses house saving
Don't build a glass house if you're worried about saving money on heating.
moving doors tears
Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?
house skyscraper harder
Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.
positive thank-god world
We all see the world differently. And thank God for that. Otherwise, what a boring world this would be.
want
We do pretty much whatever we want to.
arrogant architect modest
If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.
art wish doe
How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine.