Minoru Yamasaki Quotes

Let’s talk about the Gas Company because this is my favorite job.

Japanese architecture is very much copied in this country and in Europe.

In this tour around the world I was not interested in contemporary buildings because I had seen contemporary buildings actually until they came out of my ears in a sense.

In other words, I have no truck for anyone who goes out and does an eclectic building.

In other words, each piece of the building must look as though it was designed for that particular building.

If you look at the buildings, you’ll find that one part looks as if it was designed by one man, and you go around and look at another facade and it looks as if it was designed by another man, you see.

If you have white walls, human beings look better in a room than if you have red walls.

If you examine this, I think that you will find that it’s the mechanics of Japanese architecture that have been thought of as the direct influence upon our architecture.

I want to do very useful buildings and I would like to find a method of producing these buildings through our technology because I think that this is the only way that we will gain wonderful environment easily in the future.

I have been criticized rather strenuously by painters and sculptors for not incorporating their work in our buildings.

I feel this is very important for us to have serene buildings because our civilization is chaotic as it is, you see; our whole machine age has brought about a chaos that has to be somehow counterbalanced, I think.

I believe that we must understand the economy of the situation.

But now I know that it is very important that all buildings should be consistent, that this is the quality of the Gothic cathedral, for instance, that we like.

Being the gateway to a large city, St. Louis, I had felt from the very beginning that somehow this building should symbolize this sense of being a gateway.

Because, if we understand how a building is to be produced and we find a way that it can be more simply produced, then obviously we are contributing to building better buildings more easily.

And sometimes I’m criticized. But I think that if those who criticize us will look at the reason why the shape is this, well then, I think that they would not object so strenuously.