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Ada Louise Huxtable Biography

Ada Louise Huxtable (née Landman; March 14, 1921 – January 7, 2013) was an architecture critic and writer on architecture. In 1970 she was awarded the first ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger, also a Pulitzer Prize-winner (1984) for architectural criticism, said in 1996: "Before Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture was not a part of the public dialogue." "She was a great lover of cities, a great preservationist and the central planet around which every other critic revolved," said architect Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale University School of Architecture.

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Ada Louise Huxtable Quotes

Symbol and metaphor are as much a part of the architectural vocabulary as stone and steel.

Architectural, Part, Steel, Stones, Symbol, Vocabulary

New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur.

Hyperbole, Irreverence, Names, New York, Thy

the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. . . . At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style.

Goes On, Life, Skyscraper, Style, Unbearable, Worst

The New York Hilton is laid out with a competence that would make a computer blush.

Blush, Competence, Computer, Hilton, New York, York

All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice.

Agency, Self, Practice, Conventional, Strongholds

The age of Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is over. It will be presidential libraries from now on.

Age, Libraries, Lincoln, Memorial, Presidential

No matter what an architect may be at home, he becomes a monumentalist when he comes to Washington.

Home, May, Matter, Monumentalist, Becomes

Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know. The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale — and ultimately it is a gamble — demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.

Extraordinary, Payoff, Tombstone, Tragedy, Triumph, Whos

One of the most basic human instincts is the need to decorate. Nothing is exempt - the body, the objects one uses, from intimate to monumental, and all personal and ceremonial space. It is an instinct that responds. . . to some deep inner urge that has been variously described as the horror of a vacuum and the need to put one's imprint on at least one small segment of the world.

Clothes, Imprint, Segment, Space, Vacuums, World

Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake.

Becoming, California, Fake, Real

Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station.

Railroads, Today, Obsolete, Railroad

The art of decoration requires the most sophisticated and self-indulgent skills. Its aim has always been to sate the senses as gloriously as possible. . . . ornament is not only a source of sensuous pleasure; it supplies a necessary kind of magic to people and places that lack it. More than just a dread of empty spaces has led to the urge to decorate; it is the fear of empty selves.

Art, Lack, Self, Space, Spaces, Supplies

Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death. Waiting is a special kind of activity - if activity is the right word for it - because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives.

People, Waiting, Special, Birth, Normal, Death

If the British are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of shoppers.

British, Nation, Shopkeepers, Shoppers, Shopping, United States

Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.

Clerks, Endless, Mock, Palaces

Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed

Afford, Architecture, Blow, Landmarks, New York, Tin Cans

Really living without clutter takes an iron will. . . This involves eternal watchfulness and that oldest and most relentless of the housewife's occupations, picking up. I have a feeling that picking up will go on long after ways have been found to circumvent death and taxes.

Clutter, Eternal, Feelings, Iron Will, Long, Taxes

Postmodernism is a freewheeling, unfettered, and unapologetic pursuit of style.

Style, Unapologetic, Architecture, Freewheeling, Pursuit

Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line, it is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work. What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.

Art, Feelings, Nature, Reduce, Self, Way

The skyscraper and the twentieth century are synonymous; the tall building is the landmark of our age. . . . Shaper of cities and fortunes, it is the dream, past and present, acknowledged or unacknowledged, of almost every architect.

Acknowledged, Cities, Dream, Past, Present, Tall

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