Quotes

“Intellectually, Pitt says he was attracted first to the Arts and Crafts style because of ‘its elegance of simplicity.‘ But he finds himself becoming more and more contemporary. ‘As I work my way through it, I have become a lover of all architecture,’ he says. ‘I am fascinated and obsessed with where it’s going. Like art and music, architecture reflects society and where society is heading.’ Besides Gehry, Pitt says he has “flipped” for Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas.”

“Next I want to go to Barcelona and study the architecture of Gaudi. I’m interested in architecture, that’s what I originally went to college for.” – Film Review 1994

“He details London’s pleasures: the architecture [he particularly rates The History Museum, The Michelin Building and the exterior of Harrods].” – Empire 1994

“It must be noted that the morning was spent conducting Pitt’s primary objective for this city; a tour of all the buildings designed by architect Charles Rennie MacKintosh, one of Pitt’s heroes.” – Rolling Stone 1994

“Pitt talks about his architectural tour of Glasgow, relating the similarities in the work of MacKintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright.” – Rolling Stone 1994

“His love of architecture and drawing is so consuming that he sketches continually in his spare time.” – Rolling Stone 1994

“Let’s look around the trailer for a moment, shall we? … a book on Frank Lloyd Wright (architecture is one of Pitt’s passions).” – Rolling Stone 1997

“Pitt, who grew up in Springfield, Missouri, is fairly knowledgeable about design and is also, I gather, a good draftsman himself. Alan Pakula, who directed him in the 1997 Irish drama The Devil’s Own, told me that Pitt liked to hole up in his trailer with architectural plans during long production delays.” – Vanity 1998

“Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas are my two favorites. MVRDV ( Dutch architects Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries ), ahhhh, some of my favorites! The voices are out there, and to the people who are putting money into new buildings, use these guys! What I love most about MVRDV are that these guys are completely redesigning how the masses are moving through the city ( Rotterdam ) and experiencing it. There’s this architect I just found out about named Stephen Holl ( New York ), who’s great. I’ve also been jonesing about Daniel Libeskind ( Berlin )” – Flaunt 2001

You have four matching Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs. Have you ever been to the Mies Pavilion in Barcelona?
“Oh, I love that place. It;s the perfect building. It’s perfect. The first building that got me going was Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water house. I had two electives I had to kill in college, and it was a two elective class. I’d never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright. My buddy was taking it, and it was supposed to be easy, so I took it. It blew my mind, coming from Missouri, that you could live that way. I had no idea that there was more than the classical, traditional house. Any of these guys like Gehry – who have reinvented the dwelling that blows the lid off of anything we’ve done before – I admire.” – Flaunt 2001

“One of the first designing couples I got into was Charles and Ray Eames, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. Macdonald did a lot of the small details for Mackintosh’s projects.” – Flaunt 2001

Despite a productive cough (evidence of a lingering flue), he lights up a Marlboro. “Mauve carpeting, cheap prints, bad red-oak cabinets. I call it a waterbed aesthetic,” he says. Pitt’s pronouncements on furniture should be taken seriously-he’s an architecture enthusiast, particularly the Arts and Crafts style of Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh; last summer, he contributed photographs to a coffee-table book on the Greene Brothers, pioneers of California’s bungalow style. Mr. And Mrs. Pitt are currently restoring a Craftsman house in the hills of Hollywood. And he’s just getting started. “I’d like to design something like a city,” he says. “Or a museum.” He pauses for a moment. “I want to do something hands-on,” he adds “rather than just play golf, which is the sport of the religious right.” – Details 2001

Part of what Pitt likes about architecture is the discovery. ‘There is that thing I love of an individual in a room finding a line — and by ‘line’ I mean an angle, something that interests them — and following it and seeing where it goes,’ he says, admitting that the collaborative aspect of filmmaking does not engage his intellect in the same way. – USA Weekend 2003

“‘I don’t know what it is. Well, I do know a little bit what it is. I’ve always been a bit of a junkie for it. And it’s one of the few art forms that you can be inside and you can experience it by being smaller than it. And I have a strict belief that architecture has an ability to lift your soul. That we are susceptible by our surroundings. Like the imprisoned self. That would be the opposite. And that there are these people now who are leading us to a future and.. I will tell you the misperception, of architecture. Is that it’s all aesthetics and it’s really not aesthetics and when you sit with these guys, these masters like Gehry and Hadid..’” – Charlie Rose Show 2004