Alvar Aalto

“I tell you, it is an exacting art to be simple.”

“The ultimate goal of the architect... is to create a paradise. Every house, every product of architecture... should be a fruit of our endeavour to build an earthly paradise for people.”

“Architecture is not a science. It is a great historical procession. It is an art, a game of forms and volumes.”

“God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is, at least for me, an abuse of paper.”

“Form must have a content, and that content must be linked with nature.”

“Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but a splintered world.”

“Beauty is the harmony of purpose and form.”

“Our time is so specialized that we have people who know more and more about less and less.”

“Modern architecture does not mean the use of immature new materials; the main thing is to refine materials in a more human direction.”

“Nothing is as dangerous in architecture as dealing with separated problems. If we split life into separated problems we split the possibilities to make good building art.”

“True architecture exists only where man stands in the center.”

“We should work for simple, good, undecorated things... but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street.”

“Architecture has its own realm. It has a special physical relationship with life. I do not think of it primarily as either art or science, but as a genuine synthetic process.”

“The duty of the architect is to give life a more sensitive structure.”