TOA Architects

Supply and demand regulate architectural form

Ornament is a crime and all ornamentation must be rejected

One can say that the city itself is the collective
memory of its people, and like memory it is
associated with objects and places. The city is
the locus of the collective memory.

“Architects don’t invent anything, they just transform
reality.”

“Architecture belongs to culture, not to civilization.”

“The very essence of architecture consists of a variety
and development reminiscent of natural organic life. This is the only true style in architecture.”

“Architecture is a ride – a physical ride and an
intellectual ride.”

a French architect and a pioneer of the architectural use of
reinforced concrete. His major works include the first Art Deco
building in Paris and the Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy
(1922–23);

“There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp
corners.”

“Form does not necessarily follow function”

“Straight line belongs to man and the curved line belongs to
God”

“Clearly, if a building is not functionally
and technically in order, then it isn’t
architecture either; it’s just a building.”

“Architecture falls between art and airports. It’s pragmatic, and it helps you get from point A to point B. But it also works as art. It makes you think twice. It inspires you. It brings you back to yourself.”

"father of American architecture"

“Architecture is not so much a knowledge of form, but a form
of knowledge.”

“For me, architecture is the means, not the
end. It’s a means of making different life forms
possible.”

“When working on a problem, I never think about beauty; I
think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have
finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know that it is
wrong.”

Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with
European Symbolism.

“I see my buildings as pieces of cities, and in my designs
I try to make them into responsible and contributing
citizens.”

“Market forces do not make cities; they destroy them”

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir
men's blood"

“To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody
history but to articulate it.”

Another famous architect, he is an American architect and
chairman emeritus of the architectural firm
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He is still a
consulting partner at the firm, and he is
responsible for the redesign and
construction of the new One World Trade
Center in New York.

“Function influence but does not dictate form”

“Beauty grows from necessity not from repetition of
formulas”

“Architecture seizes upon space, encompasses
space and is space itself.”

Famous for his Thin Shell Structures.

“I don’t want to do architecture that’s dry and dull”

“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”

“The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture
of our own, we have no soul of our own civilization.”

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will
never fail you. Space is the breath of art.”

“Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form
and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”

“Every great architect is -necessarily- a great poet. He must be a
great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.”

“Everything man is doing in architecture is to try
to go against nature. Of course we have to
understand nature to know how far we have to
go against nature. The secret, I think, of the
future is not doing too much. All architects have
the tendency to do too much.”

Japanese Architect, In 1993, he received the Pritzker
Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses
of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.

French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et
Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the
French railway network, most famously the Garabit Viaduct. He is
best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, designed by his
company and built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, and his
contribution to building the Statue of Liberty in New York. After his
retirement from engineering, he focused on research into
meteorology and aerodynamics, making significant contributions in
both fields.

“Architecture is not an inspirational business, it’s a rational procedure to
do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that’s all.”

A prominent figure of the Art Nouveau style. He achieved early
fame with his design for the Castel Beranger, the first Art
Nouveau apartment building in Paris, which was selected in an
1899 competition as one of the best new building facades in
the city. He is best known for the glass and iron edicules or
canopies, with ornamental Art Nouveau curves, which he
designed to cover the entrances of the first stations of the Paris
Metro.

German-American architect, known for projects
such as the Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz in
Berlin, Germany; the Messeturm in Frankfurt,
Germany; the Thompson Center in Chicago; One
Liberty Place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and
Suvarnabhumi Airport, in Bangkok, Thailand, among
others. His recent projects included 50 West Street, a
residential tower in New York City in 2016 and the
ThyssenKrupp Test Tower in Rottweil, Germany in
2017. He was also behind 1000M in Chicago which
began construction in 2019.

American architect, best known for his work in a style
that became known as Richardsonian Romanesque. Along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright,
Richardson is one of "the recognized trinity of American
architecture."

Who are the recognized trinity of American architecture?

Belgian painter, architect, interior designer, and art
theorist. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, he
is considered one of the founders of Art Nouveau in
Belgium. He worked in Paris with Siegfried Bing, the
founder of the first gallery of Art Nouveau in Paris. He spent the most important part of his career in
Germany and became a major figure in the German
Jugendstil. He had a decisive influence on German
architecture and design at the beginning of the 20th
century.

Dutch architect and designer. He is considered one of the
fathers of the architecture of the Amsterdam School. He studied architecture at the Zurich Institute of Technology between 1875 and 1878 after which he traveled extensively for three years through Europe. In the 1880s he formed a partnership in the Netherlands with Theodore
Sanders which produced a mixture of practical and utopian
projects. A published author, he held memberships in
various architectural societies including CIAM I. He was influenced by the Neo-Romanesque brickwork architecture of Henry Hobson Richardson and of the combination of structures of iron seen with brick of the Castle
of the Three Geckos of Domènech i Montaner. This influence
is visible in his design for the Amsterdam Commodities
Exchange, for which he would also draw on the ideas of Viollet-
le-Duc. The load-bearing bare brick walls and the notion of the
primacy of space, and of walls as the creators of form, would be
the constitutive principles of the 'Hollandse Zakelijkheid'.

“Life is architecture and architecture is the mirror of life.”

English architect who was the first significant architect in
England in the early modern era and the first to employ
Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As
the most notable architect in England, he was the first
person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the
Italian Renaissance to Britain. He left his mark on London by
his design of single buildings, such as the Queen's House
which is the first building in England designed in a pure
classical style, and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, as well as
the layout for Covent Garden square which became a model
for future developments in the West End. He made major
contributions to stage design by his work as a theatrical
designer for several dozen masques, most by royal command
and many in collaboration with Ben Jonson.

is an international architecture firm headquartered in Basel, Switzerland,
with additional offices in Berlin, Hong Kong, London,
Munich, New York City, Paris, and San Francisco. Founded in 1978 by ____ & _______, the practice's portfolio includes more than 600
projects in 40 countries. The company is led by the
founding partners along with senior partners Christine
Binswanger, Ascan Mergenthaler, Stefan Marbach, Jason
Frantzen, Andreas Fries, Wim Walschap, and the CEO,
Adrian Keller, who collectively oversee the firm's
direction and management. Its staff comprises over 500
employees representing more than 50 nationalities.

He worked in partnership with James Gowan from 1956 to 1963,
then with Michael Wilford from 1971 until 1992. He studied architecture from 1945 until 1950 at the University of
Liverpool.

“Each new situation requires a new architecture.”

In 1957, he won an international design competition for his
design of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. He revised
design, which he completed in 1961, was the basis for the
landmark, although it was not completed until 1973. He attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1937–42) and was influenced early on by Gunnar Asplund and Alvar Aalto.

He was an English gardener, architect, engineer and Liberal
Member of Parliament. He is best known for designing
the Crystal Palace, which was built in Hyde Park, London
to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's
fair, and for cultivating the Cavendish banana, the most
consumed banana in the Western world.

“Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last
long.”

"Modern architecture need not be Western"

“I think buildings should imitate ecological systems.”

Born in Kanie, Aichi, he studied architecture
at Kyoto University, graduating with a bachelor's
degree in 1957. He then attended University of Tokyo,
under the supervision of Kenzo Tange. He received a master's degree in 1959. He then went on to study for a doctorate of philosophy, but
subsequently dropped out in 1964. He was conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Architecture by the Chancellor of Universiti Putra
Malaysia (UPM), Malaysia in Sept. 7, 2002. With colleagues, he cofounded the Metabolist Movement in 1960, whose members were known as
Metabolists. It was a radical Japanese avant-garde
movement pursuing the merging and recycling of
architecture styles within an Asian context.

“Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.”

“Form follows function.”

“To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in
order? Function and objects.”

“A house is a machine for living in.”

“Cube within a cube”

was a Brazilian architect and urban planner, best known for his plan for Brasilia.

“Less is more.”

“God is in the details.”

“I am as much interested in the smallest detail as in the whole
structure.”

Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC,
known for his multi-volume work titled De architectura “The
Ten Books on Architecture.” As the only treatise on
architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded
since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory,
as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. He states that all buildings should have three attributes:
firmitas, utilitas, and venustas
His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the
human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing of the
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci.“

Japanese-American architect, best known for designing the
original World Trade Center in New York City and several
other large-scale projects. He was one of the most
prominent architects of the 20th century. He and fellow
architect Edward Durell Stone are generally considered to be
the two master practitioners of "New Formalism".

“I don’t believe in morality in architecture.”

“There is a profound ethic to architecture which is different
from the other arts.”

“As an architect, you design for the present, with an
awareness of the past, for a future which is
essentially unknown.”

Form follows beauty

“I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free- flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein.”

Sculptor of monuments

His works were considered as predecessors to modern architecture

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

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

“architecture is less the expression of state power; it
is a human desire, tied to the mind of the human
race.”

“Design is not about decorating functional forms – it is about creating
forms that accord with the character of the object and that show new
technologies to advantage.”

“From autonomy to automation”

“Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough,
it can assume a quality that bears witness to a past life.”

“Architecture is the art of how to waste space.”

“Father of Arts and Crafts”

His use of vernacular architecture demonstrated his
commitment to "the art of common building."

Known worldwide as a structural engineer and architect and for his innovative use of reinforced concrete, especially with numerous notable
thin shell structures worldwide.

A leading figure in modern architecture, he was responsible for
the design of over 1,000 buildings.

“Buildings are always better than drawings and models.”

“Buildings are forms of performances.”

“A building has at least two lives – the one imagined by its
maker and the life it lives afterward – and they are never the
same.”

“one of the great beauties of architecture is that each
time, it is like life starting all over again”

“You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to
criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.”

“An important work of architecture will create polemics.”

"A house is like a flower pot"

Noted for his modernist and constructivist designs in
high-tech architecture.

“To be an architect is to possess an individual voice
speaking a generally understood language of form.”

"Less is a bore"

Spanish-Swiss architect, structural engineer,
sculptor and painter, particularly known for his
bridges supported by single leaning pylons, and
his railway stations, stadiums, and museums,
whose sculptural forms often resemble living
organisms.

Known for his innovative work with paper, particularly recycled cardboard tubes used to quickly and efficiently house
disaster victims.

"a committed teacher who is not only a role model for younger generation, but also an inspiration."

A Chicago-based architectural, urban planning, and
engineering firm.

Who founded SOM

Japanese autodidact (Self-taught) architect

One of the founders of Morphosis Architects in 1972

“I think of architecture as a piece of clothing to wrap around
human beings.”

"one of the world's most innovative and influential architects."

He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the
contemporary notion of a "simulated" city

was one of the founders of Art Nouveau movement

achieved fame as the architect who designed The
Monument to the Third International, more commonly known
as Tatlin's Tower, which he began in 1919.

He is best known for executing large public projects
in New York City and upstate, many of them a result of his
long and fruitful personal relationship with Nelson
Rockefeller, for whom he served as an adviser.

founder of the Bauhaus School

became the first Chinese citizen to win the
Pritzker Prize

He was, for most of his life, an expatriate Canadian who is best known for his work in England, the most notable of which is the Modernist block of flats known as the Isokon building in Hampstead, London.

was an American architect, best known as the architect in charge of designing New York City's Chrysler Build

“There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?”

“If you want an easy life, don’t be an architect.”

"reinvestigate the aborted and untested
experiments of Modernism...to unveil new fields of
building"

She was described by The Guardian as the "Queen of Curves", who "liberated architectural geometry, giving it a whole new expressive identity".