Ada Louise Huxtable Quotations

Because it is a national landmark, there is only one way to judge the Kennedy Center - against the established standard of progressive and innovative excellence in architectural design that this country is known and admired for internationally. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Center not only does not achieve this standard of innovative excellence; it also did not seek it. The architect opted for something ambiguously called 'timelessness' and produced meaninglessness. It is to the Washington manner born. Too bad, since there is so much of it.

It is the rare architect who does not hope in his heart to design a great building and for whom the quest is not a quiet, consuming passion.

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.

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

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.

California ... is the place that sets the trends and establishes the values for the rest of the country; like a slow ooze, California culture spreads eastward across the land.

Clutter in its highest and most organized form is called collecting.

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

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

Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man. That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.