Architecture

Great architecture should connect technology to emotion, and space to the soul.
© 2010 Ian Ritchie

A little repetition refines; excessive repetition stalls the mind.
© 2007 Ian Ritchie

Imitation is good business, but bad for satisfaction.
© 2007 Ian Ritchie

The values we admire in architecture cannot be measured by economists.
© 1998 Ian Ritchie

Imitation paralyzes creative intelligence which has to operate in freedom, but a freedom constrained by discipline.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

I am motivated by ideas – creating them, developing them and bringing them to realisation because they have values – social physical, intellectual and moral.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Architecture is synthesis, not separation – the synthesis of ideas, of people, of materials and ultimately the synthesis of the man made with nature.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

It is a blank sheet which paralyzes, while the context (or parts of it) act as the conceptual trigger to creative freedom.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Understanding the context is the first investigation of architecture.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

The context of architecture is not only physical, but social, emotional, financial, local and global.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Gravitas recognises the idea of captivity, of being attached to the earth, and in architecture reveals a sense of belonging to the earth, of connection of foundation.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Levitas is about being above the earth. Both gravitas and levitas exist in architecture. The tension between gravitas and levitas is never equal but is a symbol of the architect’s intention to give the design a bias, one way or the other.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Levitas suggests an inclination towards lightness, but lightness is fundamentally about the essential.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Lightness is an exercise in reductivism – of the problem, of the concept, of the design, of the structure, of the materials.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Superfluousness is an anathema to lightness.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Lightness tends towards minimalism, not necessarily transparency.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Transparency is about a feeling, of openness, or of emptiness.
© 1997 Ian Ritchie

Architecture has two distinct phases: the mental dream and the nightmare of negotiating reality!
© 1996 Ian Ritchie

Architecture’s progress is measured by improved social spaces, the rest is fashion.
© 1995 Ian Ritchie

As practising, thinking architects we should not concern ourselves so much with the past. There is so much of it and it never stops accumulating and there are many who are preoccupied with it! We should concern ourselves more with the future, for that is where we are heading? And that raises big questions as to how and what we must think about.
© 1994 Ian Ritchie

Space is in here as well as out there. Space is a continuum between inside and outside, both physically and mentally.
© 1994 Ian Ritchie

There is always a moral and ethical dimension to an architect’ work. Sometimes it is evident, sometimes not.
© 1994 Ian Ritchie

Architects are not sculptors. Architects might occasionally think they are, but sculptors perceive form and light quite differently.
© 1994 Ian Ritchie

The difference between architecture and sculpture is that the former has to incorporate functioning toilets.
© 1994 Ian Ritchie

Architecture only comes alive when you’re actually there, and you feel it through your eyes, your nose, your ears, your feet.
© 1992 Ian Ritchie

Poiesis is the creative process to realise a project which embodies the emotions and values of those involved.
© 1987 Ian Ritchie

I call architecture frozen music.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Conversations with Eckermann, 1829).

Architecture in general is frozen music.
Friedrich von Schelling (philos. der kunst, 1802)

Ritchie Studio

Architecture

Ritchie Studio