thinking architecture

"There is a power in the ordinary things of everyday life, as Edward Hopper's paintings seem to say. We only have to look at them long enough to see it.
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Precious moments of intuition result from patient work.
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I frequently come across buildings that have been designed with a good deal of effort and will to find special form, and I find I am put off by them. The architect responsible for the building is not present, but he talks to me unceasingly from every detail, he keeps on saying the same thing, and I quickly lose interest.
Good architecture should recieve the human visitor, should enable him to experience it and live in it , but it should not constantly talk at him.
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To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being.
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I listen to the sounds of the space, to the way materials and surfaces respond to touching and tapping, and to silence that is a prerequisite of hearing."

in "Thinking Architecture" by Peter Zumthor - Birkhäuser