In every skyscraper In every skyscraper there is someone going mad. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities 21. Four-Story Limit architectureurbanismmadness
Madness All our madness comes from having our stomachs empty and our heads full of air. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote foodmadness
Most cities were mostly built by improvisation In Architecture Without Architects, Bernard Rudofsky documented the ways in which most cities were mostly built by improvisation, following no consistent formal design. Building was added to building, street to street, their forms adapting to different site conditions in the process of extension. Rudofsky thought that this hidden order is how most settlements of poor people develop and that the work of improvising street order attaches people to their communities, whereas 'renewal' projects, which may provide a cleaner street, pretty houses, and large shops, give the inhabitants no way to mark their presence on the space. Richard Sennett, The Craftsman I am hereNon-architects urbanism