I think any man who really has faith in himself will be dubbed arrogant, I suppose. I think that's what happened to me. - Frank Lloyd Wright
In this video produced by Blank on Blank, Frank Lloyd Wright shares his thoughts on New York City, religious architecture, and being labeled arrogant. The interview was taken from a 1957 episode of The Mike Wallace Interview when Wright was 90 years old. Showing his trademark fieriness even at his advanced age, Wright claims that if he had another 15 years he would be able to change the whole of the United States for the better, dismissing the judgement of those with the audacity to call him arrogant. Watch the animated video above, and read on after the break for some of the interview's most quotable moments.
On criticism of his design for the Guggenheim New York:
Somebody said the museum out here on Fifth Avenue looked like a washing machine... Well I've heard a lot of that type of reaction and I've always discounted it as worthless.
On Nature and Architecture:
For 500 years, what we've called architecture has been phony... In the sense that it was not innate. It wasn't organic. It didn't have the character of nature, and I put a capital N on Nature and made it my church.
On the New York skyline:
It does not [excite me] because it was never planned. It's all raised for rent and is a great monument, I think, to the power of money and greed, trying to substitute money for ideas. I don't see an idea in the whole thing anywhere, do you? What's the idea?
On his desire to Change the United States:
Having had now the experience going with the building of 769 buildings it's quite easy for me to shake them out of my sleeve and it's amazing what I could do for this country. I think the way of life to which the country has committed needs that change. I wouldn't start to change so much the way we live, as what we live in, and how we live in it.
On religious architecture:
I think it's a great shame, because it is a paragon monkey reflection and no reflection of religion... I'd like to have a free architecture, I would like to make it appropriate to the Declaration of Independence, to the center line of our freedom.
On feedback from clients:
The letters we receive from our clients tell us how those buildings we build for them have changed the character of their whole life and their whole existence, that it's different now than it was before. Well, I'd like to do that for the country.
