Simon Unwin > Quotes

“Metaphor is one of the mechanisms by which our imaginations assimilate the world. We give sense to things through comparison. We theorise about things we are trying to understand and describe by alluding to characteristics they share with other things. We create new things by emulating the familiar. The attraction of metaphor is not exclusive to our attempts to make sense of the world through words. Thousands of years ago, architectural construction originated in metaphor. Sometime in the distant past, we began consciously constructing places as lasting metaphors for those ephemeral places we make just by being in the world or adopt in our natural surroundings.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“Architecture is a subtle and difficult art. It needs dedication and involves pain. Being able ‘to architect’ is not a capacity that can be developed to sophisticated levels quickly and easily.”
― Simon Unwin, Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect

“…we use metaphor to help portray an integrated sense of the world to ourselves and to each other. Sense is different from truth, even though we might sometimes think of them as being the same. Where ‘truth’ claims to be absolute, ‘sense’ recognises relativity…”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“In language, metaphors tend to occur in passing; in architecture they are more consequential.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“Both metaphor and simile depend on our innate capacity for seeing correspondences. Such is an essential part of our ability to make sense of the world. Observing (perceiving) that ‘this resembles that’ (in abstract as well as visible ways) is an intellectual process central to the narratives we spin about our lives, about others, about natural processes, about any spiritual (religious) beliefs we might have. We use this intellectual process seriously in trying to explain things, and unselfconsciously in our everyday language. It is also an essential trait of humour.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“…metaphors in architecture are generally thought of not as treacherous sources of delusion but as (to use an architectural metaphor) cornerstones of creativity.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“Metaphor is not only an implicit comparison, it is also (to use another architectural metaphor) a bridge – between our inner and outer worlds – which not only mediates but explains and stimulates too.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“We might think of metaphor as a device belonging to the poetry of words but metaphor can also be non-verbal – visual, spatial, experiential… Metaphor is essential to the poetry of architecture too.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“…we human beings are, at our psychological core, game players; we have a predilection for rule systems (which we also like to transgress), strategies (in which we like to display cunning) and competition (in which we like to establish our superiority over others).”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“There is no truth in architecture, only proposition and a yearning for sense.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“But that is the danger of metaphors: they can be overstretched, innocently or intentionally, as an attempt at polemic or rhetorical advantage.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“All architecture is, metaphorically, a shadow cast on a cave wall. Architecture is a version of the truth – a version of sense – proposed by the architect and realised in the physical form of buildings and the identification of places for inhabitation.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“In a creative activity such as architecture, metaphor is less a threat to objective truth and more (to use another architectural metaphor) an arena of conceptual vitality – an arena being a performance area shareable with others.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“We develop our architecture through metaphor. In the distant past we looked to those places we recognised and experienced in nature for ideas – the shelter of a cave, the shade of a tree, the original refuge of the womb, our own proud vertical stance and point of view, the communal circle we make with our friends in a forest clearing… – and sought to emulate them in our architecture.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“The metaphors of architecture are protean ghosts haunting a many roomed labyrinth. They morph and fuse, subtly mutating perceptions; like distorting glass. When you look more closely you realise that the labyrinth of architectural ideology is ruled by those protean ghosts.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“The general argument is that metaphors live at the conceptual core of architecture; but those metaphors are of many and varied kinds, which change and grow as you try to pin them down.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture

“There are as many metaphorical subtleties in architecture as there are in language, maybe more. The metaphorical power of architecture is inescapable and has many dimensions.”
― Simon Unwin, Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture