“I always see the site. Of course I went there. I did an interesting thing, at their suggestion, as a matter of fact. I told them that I wanted to get as clear an idea of vernacular architecture in that part of the world as possible. They took me to some villages nearby, but they also took me to a tourist park that had built about twelve structures from the Indonesian islands. They are very distinctive architectural types. New Guinea is very different, of course, from Sumatra, and very different from Bali, and so on. They're all a little bit corny and you could tell what was supposed to be there and what wasn't. It wasn't perfect. I knew these things from photographs because I'd also done a little research. I had known certainly some of them but not all of them. To see them, even in their degenerated forms in a tourist village, was a fascinating thing. You can always see certain things in reality. That was very instructive for me. You could see the intent; let me put it that way. Quite often the detail wasn't as it should be. Sometimes they would fireproof things when they shouldn't. It's a little bit like Williamsburg; things get changed. It was very instructive to do that. After all, I could have taken six months and gone to two thousand islands or something but I didn't have the time.”
Interview with Robert Bruegmann, 1986

In many of his public comments on architecture, Paul Rudolph referred to “urbanism” as one of the guiding principles in his work. In this 1992 article published in the Italian journal, Arca he articulates that explanation.

“Urban design is remodeling, adding, subtracting, reworking, relating and reforming three-dimensional spaces for human activities, including all pedestrian and vehicular systems. Urban design deals with the old and the new, the expanded and the contracted, the hum-drum and the extraordinary. It brings people together. It separates people. It commemorates its history. It never lies, but portrays life three-dimensionally, as it really is. At its best, it creates related and usable exterior spaces, provides means of “getting there” and a “there” once you are “there”. It is the mother art of civilization, for it allows and, indeed, demands ideas, thinking, reactions to opportunities of the moment, executed in the spirit of its time, but demands respect for its earlier efforts. The new depends on the old and is responsible for the future. If the old is ignored, misunderstood, the future will mock the seemingly new and reveal for all to plainly see the false thinking expressed. All the other arts are handmaidens to urban design.”

Rudolph, Paul Marvin, 1918-1997. "Architecture and Society." Arca No. 62 (July/August 1992): 3-5.

“In Tracey Towers, the exterior walls are not curved for structural reasons at all, but because the site plan and traffic movement dictated an easing of the corners. They are also curved in order to lead the eye around the towers, thereby emphasizing their three-dimensionality. They are also curved because they give a heightened sense of security to the occupants of a very high building, and one looks out and sees these walls, which seem like huge columns, closely rising from the ground. However, they are not columns, but walls, but they are read as columns, which is as intended for psychological reasons.
The geometry of the car is curvilinear and is, in this case, related to the rectilinear organization of the building itself. It is the result of two dissimilar elements coming together.”
Cook, John Wesley. Conversations with Architects : Philip Johnson, Kevin Roche, Paul Rudolph, Bertrand Goldberg, Morris Lapidus, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown. New York: Praeger, 1973.

“And so we come to civic architecture, the grand omission for half a century. In its most simple terms civic architecture means assigning a proper role to each building so it works in concert with its neighbors, thereby creating a comprehensible whole. This is the opposite of the Madison Avenue view, which thinks of each building as a billboard for its owner. It means that there must be the focal building, the foreground and supporting buildings, the building that acts as a base for the important building, the building that acts as a pivot, the gateway building, the transitional building, etc. Architects have abdicated from the traditional role they played in large-scale, three-dimensional design. We mistakenly thought that the planners were civic designers. They are not now, and never will be.”

Panel discussion with William H. Jordy, Philip Johnson, Peter Blake and Ulrich Franzen, 1962

"In New Haven, in the 60s, I designed some housing using trailers. I had the acquiescence of Mayor Lee, a remarkable mayor indeed. The whole notion of making a project for about 150 people using trailers was difficult to persuade anybody to do. I suppose it was a mistake; it was eventually demolished. People hated it. First of all it leaked, which is a very good reason to hate something, but I think it was much more complicated than that. Psychologically, the good folk who inhabited these dwellings thought that they were beneath them. In other words, the deviation of the dwelling was not something to their liking. I thought, and I suppose the mayor thought, that trailers were perfectly good enough for them. But I should say, in defense of what we built, that it was a pocket court plan and that it provided a separate outside space for each family. There were two stories, with a core at the center. I am very tenacious about certain things, and in the long run it seems to me that with the correcting of mistakes one can make something much more successful.”
Remarks included in the posthumous article “Rethinking Designs in the 60s,” Perspecta, 1998.