Frank L Wright - Collected Quotes

"Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly, but take every building to pieces, and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles." (Frank L Wright, "Two Lectures on Architecture", 1931)

"Science can give us only the tools in the box, these mechanical miracles that it has already given us. But of what use to us are miraculous tools until we have mastered the humane, cultural use of them? We do not want to live in a world where the machine has mastered the man; we want to live in a world where man has mastered the machine." (Frank L Wright, "Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture: Selected Writings 1894-1940", 1941)

"Any good architect is by nature a physicist as a matter of fact, but as a matter of reality, as things are, he must be a philosopher and a physician." (Frank L Wright, "Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography", 1943)

"A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there." (Frank L Wright)

"Along the wayside some blossom, with unusually glowing color or prettiness of form attracts us; we accept gratefully its perfect loveliness; but, seeking to discover the secret of its charm, we find the blossom, whose more obvious claim first arrests our attention, intimately related to the texture and shape of its foliage; we discover a strange sympathy between the form of the flower and the sys- tern upon which the leaves are arranged about the stalk. From this we are led to observe a characteristic habit of growth, and resultant nature of structure." (Frank L Wright)

"Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order." (Frank L Wright)

"Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind." (Frank L Wright)

"Building becomes architecture only when the mind of man consciously takes it and tries with all his resources to make it beautiful, to put concordance, sympathy with nature, and all that into it. Then you have architecture." (Frank L Wright)

"God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing." (Frank L Wright)

"How many understand that Nature is the essential character of whatever is. It's something you'll find by looking not at, but in, always in. It's always inside the thing, and it makes the outside. And some day, when you get sufficiently proficient in understanding the use of the term, you can tell by the outside pretty much from what's inside." (Frank L Wright)

"Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity." (Frank L Wright)

"The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty." (Frank L Wright)

"The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist." (Frank L Wright)

"We've been fighting from the beginning for organic architecture. That is, architecture where the whole is to the part as the part is to the whole, and where the nature of materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance becomes a necessity - architecture of democracy." (Frank L Wright)

"You can study mathematics all your life and never do a bit of thinking." (Frank L Wright)

Nature's Architecture

"Whoever surveys the curious fabric of the universe can never imagine, that so noble a structure should be fram’d for no other use, than barely for mankind to live and breathe in. It was certainly the design of the great Architect, that his creatures should afford not only necessaries and accommodations to our animal part, but also instructions to our intellectual." (Sir Thomas P Blount, "A Natural History", 1693)

"Nature builds up by her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring." (Sir John F W Herschel, "The Cabinet of Natural Philosophy", 1831)

"[…] the lifeless symmetry of architecture, however beautiful the design and proportion, no man would be so mad as to put in competition with the animated charms of nature." (Fanny Burney, "Evelina", 1909)

"The pleasure derived from the discovery of some secret of Nature unknown before except to the architect of the universe surpasses all the rewards the world can give." (Richard Gregory, "Discovery: or, The Spirit and Service of Science", 1916)

"Architecture is the first manifestation of man creating his own universe, creating it in the image of nature, submitting to the laws of nature, the laws which govern our own nature, our universe. The laws of gravity, of statics and of dynamics, impose themselves by a reductio ad absurdum: everything must hold together or it will collapse." (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret [Le Corbusier], "Towards a New Architecture", 1923)

"As the complexity of the structure of matter became revealed through research, its basic simplicity, unity, and dependability became equally evident. So we now see ourselves in a world governed by natural laws instead of by capricious deities and devils. This does not necessarily mean that God has been ruled out of the picture, but it does mean that the architect and engineer of the universe is a far different type of being from the gods assumed by the ancients, and that man lives and dies in a world of logical system and orderly performance." (Karl T Compton, cca. 1930–1949)

"[…] the universe is not a rigid and inimitable edifice where independent matter is housed in independent space and time; it is an amorphous continuum, without any fixed architecture, plastic and variable, constantly subject to change and distortion. Wherever there is matter and motion, the continuum is disturbed. Just as a fi sh swimming in the sea agitates the water around it, so a star, a comet, or a galaxy distorts the geometry of the spacetime through which it moves." (Lincoln Barnett, "The Universe and Dr. Einstein", 1948)

"Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring." (John Herschel)

Architecture in Systems

"Thus, the central theme that runs through my remarks is that complexity frequently takes the form of hierarchy, and that hierarchic systems have some common properties that are independent of their specific content. Hierarchy, I shall argue, is one of the central structural schemes that the architect of complexity uses." (Herbert A Simon, "The Architecture of Complexity", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 106 (6), 1962)

"From a functional point of view, mental models can be described as symbolic structures which permit people: to generate descriptions of the purpose of a system, to generate descriptions of the architecture of a system, to provide explanations of the state of a system, to provide explanations of the functioning of a system, to make predictions of future states of a system." (Gert Rickheit & Lorenz Sichelschmidt, "Mental Models: Some Answers, Some Questions, Some Suggestions", 1999)

"Most systems displaying a high degree of tolerance against failures are a common feature: Their functionality is guaranteed by a highly interconnected complex network. A cell's robustness is hidden in its intricate regulatory and metabolic network; society's resilience is rooted in the interwoven social web; the economy's stability is maintained by a delicate network of financial and regulator organizations; an ecosystem's survivability is encoded in a carefully crafted web of species interactions. It seems that nature strives to achieve robustness through interconnectivity. Such universal choice of a network architecture is perhaps more than mere coincidences." (Albert-László Barabási, "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life", 2002)

"The word ‘symmetry’ conjures to mind objects which are well balanced, with perfect proportions. Such objects capture a sense of beauty and form. The human mind is constantly drawn to anything that embodies some aspect of symmetry. Our brain seems programmed to notice and search for order and structure. Artwork, architecture and music from ancient times to the present day play on the idea of things which mirror each other in interesting ways. Symmetry is about connections between different parts of the same object. It sets up a natural internal dialogue in the shape." (Marcus du Sautoy, "Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature", 2008)

"A graph enables us to visualize a relation over a set, which makes the characteristics of relations such as transitivity and symmetry easier to understand. […] Notions such as paths and cycles are key to understanding the more complex and powerful concepts of graph theory. There are many degrees of connectedness that apply to a graph; understanding these types of connectedness enables the engineer to understand the basic properties that can be defined for the graph representing some aspect of his or her system. The concepts of adjacency and reachability are the first steps to understanding the ability of an allocated architecture of a system to execute properly." (Dennis M Buede, "The Engineering Design of Systems: Models and methods", 2009)

"The simplest basic architecture of an artificial neural network is composed of three layers of neurons - input, output, and intermediary (historically called perceptron). When the input layer is stimulated, each node responds in a particular way by sending information to the intermediary level nodes, which in turn distribute it to the output layer nodes and thereby generate a response. The key to artificial neural networks is in the ways that the nodes are connected and how each node reacts to the stimuli coming from the nodes it is connected to. Just as with the architecture of the brain, the nodes allow information to pass only if a specific stimulus threshold is passed. This threshold is governed by a mathematical equation that can take different forms. The response depends on the sum of the stimuli coming from the input node connections and is 'all or nothing'." (Diego Rasskin-Gutman, "Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind", 2009)

"A key discovery of network science is that the architecture of networks emerging in various domains of science, nature, and technology are similar to each other, a consequence of being governed by the same organizing principles. Consequently we can use a common set of mathematical tools to explore these systems."  (Albert-László Barabási, "Network Science", 2016)

Architecture and Mathematics

"The arts which are useful, and absolutely necessary to the architect are painting and mathematics." (Leon Battista Alberti, "Treatise on Architecture", 1452)

"For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated to use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervention of Mathematic: of which sort are Perspective, Music, Astronomy, cosmography, Architecture, Machinery, and some others." (Sir Francis Bacon, "De Augmentis"Bk. 3 ["The Advancement of Learning"], 1605)

"The true mathematician is always a great deal of an artist, an architect, yes, of a poet. Beyond the real world, though perceptibly connected with it, mathematicians have created an ideal world which they attempt to develop into the most perfect of all worlds, and which is being explored in every direction. None has the faintest conception of this world except him who knows it; only presumptuous ignorance can assert that the mathematician moves in a narrow circle. The truth which he seeks is, to be sure, broadly considered, neither more nor less than consistency; but does not his mastership show, indeed, in this very limitation? To solve questions of this kind he passes unenviously over others." (Alfred Pringsheim, Jaresberichte der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung Vol 13, 1904)

"Mathematics is no more the art of reckoning and computation than architecture is the art of making bricks or hewing wood, no more than painting is the art of mixing colors on a palette, no more than the science of geology is the art of breaking rocks, or the science of anatomy the art of butchering." (Cassius J Keyser, "Lectures on Science, Philosophy and Art", 1908)

"Architecture is geometry made visible in the same sense that music is number made audible." (Claude F Bragdon, "The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture", 1910)

"Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician." (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret [Le Corbusier], "Towards a New Architecture", 1923)

"One expects a mathematical theorem or a mathematical theory not only to describe and to classify in a simple and elegant way numerous and a priori disparate special cases. One also expects ‘elegance’ in its ‘architectural’ structural makeup." (John von Neumann, "The Mathematician" [in "Works of the Mind" Vol. I (1), 1947]) 

"Mathematicians who build new spaces and physicists who find them in the universe can profit from the study of pictorial and architectural spaces conceived and built by men of art." (György Kepes, "The New Landscape In Art and Science", 1956)

"The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design." (Freeman J Dyson, [interview] 1994)

"In mathematics, beauty is a very important ingredient. Beauty exists in mathematics as in architecture and other things. It is a difficult thing to define but it is something you recognise when you see it. It certainly has to have elegance, simplicity, structure and form. All sorts of things make up real beauty. There are many different kinds of beauty and the same is true of mathematical theorems. Beauty is an important criterion in mathematics because basically there is a lot of choice in what you can do in mathematics and science. It determines what you regard as important and what is not." (Michael Atiyah, 2009)

"Architecture is akin to music in that both should be based on the symmetry of mathematics." (Frank L Wright)

"Music is architecture translated or transposed from space into time; for in music, besides the deepest feeling, there reigns also a rigorous mathematical intelligence." (Georg W F Hegel)

Out of Context: On Architecture (Definitions)

"Architecture is frozen music." (Friedrich Schelling, "Philosophie der Kunst", cca 1805)

"[...] architecture is a kind of oratory in forms, sometimes persuading or even flattering, sometimes simply commanding." (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Twilight of the Idols", 1889)

"Architecture is geometry made visible in the same sense that music is number made audible." (Claude F Bragdon, "The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture", 1910)

"Architecture is the first manifestation of man creating his own universe, creating it in the image of nature, submitting to the laws of nature, the laws which govern our own nature, our universe." (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret [Le Corbusier], Towards a New Architecture, 1923)

"Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light." (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret [Le Corbusier], "Towards a New Architecture", 1923)

"Architecture is preeminently the art of significant forms in space - that is, forms significant of their functions." (Claude Bragdon, "Wake Up and Dream", Outlook, 1931)

"Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul." (Ernest Dimnet, "What We Live By", 1932)

"Among the planets of the arts, architecture is the dark side of the moon." (Bruno Zevi, "Architecture as Space: How to Look at Architecture", 1951)

"Architecture [...] is like a great hollowed-out sculpture which man enters and apprehends by moving about within it." (Bruno Zevi, "Architecture as Space: How to Look at Architecture", 1951)

"Architecture is not art alone, it is not merely a reflection of conceptions of life or a portrait of systems of living. Architecture is environment, the stage on which our lives unfold." (Bruno Zevi, "Architecture as Space: How to Look at Architecture", 1951)

"Architecture is the art of how to waste space." (Philip Johnson, "Ideas and Men" New York Times, 1964)

"Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and the spaces between them." (Robert J Piper, "Opportunities in an Architecture Career", 1970)

"Architecture is defined as the art and science of creating buildings." (Derek Hitchins, "Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management", 2003)

"Architecture is akin to music in that both should be based on the symmetry of mathematics." (Frank L Wright)

"Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods and men, to put man into possession of his own earth." (Frank L Wright)

Mental Models LXII

"A mental model is a collection of 'connected' autonomous objects. Running  a mental model corresponds to modifying the parameters of the model by propagating information using the internal rules and specified topology. Running a mental model can also occur when autonomous objects change state. For us the definition of state is distinct from the current parameter values of an object. A state change consists of the replacement of one set of behavior rules with another." (Michael D Williams et al, "Human Reasoning About a Simple Physical System", [in "Mental Models", Ed(s). Dedre Gentner & Albert L Stevens], 1983)

"Central to this conception of mental models is the notion of autonomous objects. An autonomous object is a mental object with an explicit representation of state, an explicit representation of its topological connections to other objects, and a set of internal parameters. Associated with each autonomous object is a set of rules which modify its parameters and thus specify its behavior." (Michael D Williams et al, "Human Reasoning About a Simple Physical System", [in "Mental Models", Ed(s). Dedre Gentner & Albert L Stevens], 1983)

"In the consideration of mental models we need really consider four different things: the target system, the conceputal model of that target system, the user’s mental model of the target system, and the scientist's conceptualization of that mental model. The system that the person is learning or using is, by definition, the target system. A conceptual model is invented to provide an appropriate representation of the target system, appropriate in the sense of being accurate, consistent, and complete." (Donald A Norman, "Some Observations on Mental Models" [in "Mental Models", Ed(s). Dedre Gentner & Albert L Stevens], 1983)

"The purpose of a mental model is to allow the person to understand and to anticipate the behavior of a physical system. This means that the model must have predictive power, either by applying rules of inference or by procedural derivation (in whatever manner these properties may be realized in a person); in other words, it should be possible for people to ' run' their models mentally. This means that the conceptual mental model must also include a model of the relevant human information processing and knowledge structures that make it possible for the person to use a mental model to predict and understand the physical system." (Donald A Norman, "Some Observations on Mental Models" [in "Mental Models"], Ed(s). Dedre Gentner & Albert L Stevens], 1983)

"From a functional point of view, mental models can be described as symbolic structures which permit people: to generate descriptions of the purpose of a system, to generate descriptions of the architecture of a system, to provide explanations of the state of a system, to provide explanations of the functioning of a system, to make predictions of future states of a system." (Gert Rickheit & Lorenz Sichelschmidt, "Mental Models: Some Answers, Some Questions, Some Suggestions", 1999)

"Under the label 'cognitive maps', mental models have been conceived of as the mental representation of spatial aspects of the environment. A mental model, in this sense, comprises the topology of an area, including relevant districts, landmarks, and paths. [...] Under the label 'naive physics', mental models have been conceived of as the mental representation of natural or technical systems. A mental model, in this sense, comprises the effective determinants, true or not, of the functioning of a physical system. [...] Under the label 'model based reasoning', the mental models notion is featured in yet another area of cognitive science - deductive reasoning. In contrast to the commonly held view that logical competence depends on formal rules of deduction, it has been argued that reasoning is a semantic process based on the manipulation of mental models. [...] Finally, under terms like 'discourse model', 'situation model', or 'scenario', mental models have been conceived of as the mental representation of a verbal description of some real or fictional state of affairs. The role of mental models in the comprehension of discourse is discussed in more detail below." (Gert Rickheit & Lorenz Sichelschmidt, "Mental Models: Some Answers, Some Questions, Some Suggestions", 1999)

"A mental model is an internal representation with analogical relations to its referential object, so that local and temporal aspects of the object are preserved. It comes somewhat close to the mental images people report having in their minds whilst processing information. The great advantage of the notion of mental models, however, is its ability to include the notion of a partner model and the notion of a situation model. Thus, mental models can build a bridge to the other two dimensions of communication, namely interaction and situation." (Gert Rickheit et al, "The concept of communicative competence" [in "Handbook of Communication Competence"], 2008)

"Because all mental models or mindsets are incomplete, we can engage in second-order studies, evaluations, judgments, and assessments about our own and other operative mental models. Of course this is highly complex since the act of reflection is itself a further of framing or reframing." (Patricia H Werhane et al, "Obstacles to Ethical: Decision-Making Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience", 2013)

"Mental models bind our awareness within a particular scaffold and then selectively can filter the content we subsequently receive. Through recalibration using revised mental models, we argue, we cultivate strategies anew, creating new habits, and galvanizing more intentional and evolved mental models. This recalibration often entails developing a strong sense of self and self-worth, realizing that each of us has a range of moral choices that may deviate from those in authority, and moral imagination." (Patricia H Werhane et al, "Obstacles to Ethical: Decision-Making Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience", 2013)

"These framing perspectives or mental models construe the data of our experiences, and it is the construed data that we call 'facts'. What we often call reality, or the world, is constructed or socially construed in certain ways such that one cannot get at the source of the data except through these construals." (Patricia H Werhane et al, "Obstacles to Ethical: Decision-Making Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience", 2013)

On Symmetry VII (Nature)

"Nature builds up by her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring." (Sir John F W Herschel, "The Cabinet of Natural Philosophy", 1831)

"[…] the lifeless symmetry of architecture, however beautiful the design and proportion, no man would be so mad as to put in competition with the animated charms of nature." (Fanny Burney, "Evelina", 1909)

"The essential vision of reality presents us not with fugitive appearances but with felt patterns of order which have coherence and meaning for the eye and for the mind. Symmetry, balance and rhythmic sequences express characteristics of natural phenomena: the connectedness of nature - the order, the logic, the living process. Here art and science meet on common ground." (Gyorgy Kepes, "The New Landscape: In Art and Science", 1956)

"[…] nature, at the fundamental level, does not just prefer symmetry in a physical theory; nature demands it." (Jennifer T Thompson, "Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe", 1987)

"The quantum world is in a constant process of change and transformation. On the face of it, all possible processes and transformations could take place, but nature’s symmetry principles place limits on arbitrary transformation. Only those processes that do not violate certain very fundamental symmetry principles are allowed in the natural world." (F David Peat, "From Certainty to Uncertainty", 2002)

"[…] in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; […]" (John Ruskin, "The Stones of Venice: The Sea Stories", 2013)

"We find, therefore, under this orderly arrangement, a wonderful symmetry in the universe, and a definite relation of harmony in the motion and magnitude of the orbs, of a kind that is not possible to obtain in any other way." (Johannes Kepler)

"Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring." (John Herschel)

"The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency." (Herbert Read)

"The secret of nature is symmetry. When searching for new and more fundamental laws of nature, we should search for new symmetries." (David Gross)

"The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect." (Paul Valéry)