The Best Sentences of the Week (Volume 3)

"In this world we are living in, 98 percent of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There's no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else. They are damn buildings and that's it." Spoken by Frank Gehry at a press conference, as reported by Gizmodo.

"Ronan grasped two things before most people did. First, he understood that transit was the future, not the past," and, "Nearly 50 years after Ronan inaugurated the MTA, though, it looks like he was right—and his vision helped save New York." From "Savior of the Subways," by Nicole Gelinas for City Journal.

"This photo pretty much says everything that needs to be said about the absurdity of the flying car….I wouldn’t even bring it up except a flying car salesman was the man of the hour at an otherwise (mostly, er, somewhat) serious daylong forum on transportation issues yesterday sponsored by the Washington Post. The flying car in question was parked outside the building, blocking a bike lane on 14th Street." From "Someone Has Built the Ultimate 1950s Fantasy Vehicle All Over Again," by Tanya Snyder for Streetsblog USA.

"Everyone else, on the other hand, treats placemaking much like spell-check does. They look at that word and mentally underline it with little squiggly lines of red. 'What is that?'…How can you have a movement that doesn’t pass the spell-check test? From "Why I’m Hopeful We Can Create Better Places," by Matt Carmichael for Livability.

"The flat top was the Los Angeles hallmark, and a squandered opportunity for distinction and unusual architecture; the spire is an invitation to ascend toward a different kind of bland, gleaming sameness, toward false heights and largely unremarkable stunt architecture. But maybe that suits LA just fine." From "The Tall, Skinny, Shining Skyline That L.A. Deserves," by Matt Buchanan for The Awl.

"In other words, there is no escape. If anything, the idea of the normal, through its rejection of the possibility of an avant-garde, denies the possibility that we might design our way out of our current predicament. Instead of showing us a way out, it simply freezes us in an eternal present." From "No more normcore," by Sam Jacob for ArtReview.

"These border-crossing connections are my favorite thing about what we’re building at Instagram. You see those connections everywhere, in amazing accounts like @everydayafrica, to a gathering of 900 Instagrammers (known as an Instameet) in Jakarta, to an independent illustrator or photographer who is building a following through sheer talent. It’s this time- and space-travel that I’m most excited about continuing to build…" From "Why Instagram Worked," by Mike Krieger for Medium.

"To my amazement, the 9/11 Memorial Museum is a place of memory and meaning as powerful as anything this country has produced since the Vietnam Memorial. It works because there is almost nothing there. Its emptiness is what impresses and weighs on you." From "Aaron Betsky Goes Back to Ground Zero," By Aaron Betsky for Architect.