Witold Rybczynski > Quotes

“I enjoy visiting building sites. Unlike the ordered anonymity of office bureaucracy or the featureless regularity of a factory assembly line, a building site appears disorderly and chaotic. In fact, there is organization, but it is a loose orchestration of many separate trademen, working side by side but not necessarily together.”
― Witold Rybczynski, Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture

“There may be fewer people in the American house of the nineties, but there are a lot more things.”
― Witold Rybczynski, Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture

“The truth is that a nineteenth-century warehouse exhibits greater craft in its construction than all but the most expensive modern buildings.”
― Witold Rybczynski

“Josiah Parkes, inventor of a tile system for draining soils.”
― Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century

“A chair is the first thing you need when you don't really need anything and is, therefore, a particularly compelling symbol of civilisation. (Attributed to Ralph Caplan)”
― Witold Rybczynski, Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair: A Natural History