Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, creator of the resort village of Portmeirion, Wales, was a leading conservationist of his day. Here are a few of his most famous quotes:
"Advertisements are only offensive when out of place..."
"How often one may see new houses that are like swaggering strangers... that have insolently plunked themselves down on the edge of a cosy little gossip-party and been properly left out in the cold. They have made no gesture of salutation, no concessions, no effort to make themselves agreeable or to respond to the architectural traditions of the place, and in return the old village just will not, cannot, know them."
"There is nothing intrinsically vile about a one-storied dwelling... hatred, ridicule and contempt do not attach to the bungalow merely because it is stairless...but because this perfectly reasonable type of building has been meanly exploited to its own degradation and the disfigurement of the country at large."
"Unlike the Greeks, whose city policy still dominates Europe (except these islands), the Chinese have always looked to the countryside as their home. They accordingly definitely attempted so to harmonise human additions with natural features that a new and complex landscape might result, a fusion of conscious art with nature."
