Thom Mayne Quotes

The aesthetic of architecture has to be rooted in a broader idea about human activities like walking, relaxing and communicating. Architecture thinks about how these activities can be given added value.

But I absolutely believe that architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behaviour.

Architecture is a result of a process of asking questions and testing them and re-interrogating and changing in a repetitive way.

Do I provoke as a method of investigation? Of course. That's the essence of architecture. Do I do it with gusto? I do.

Architecture is the beginning of something because it's - if you're not involved in first principles, if you're not involved in the absolute, the beginning of that generative process, it's cake decoration.

You might say that when you step inside, you're entering a honorific space, but that's something totally different than experiencing it. And in architecture the experience comes first. That has the deepest effect on us.

So at a time in which the media give the public everything it wants and desires, maybe art should adopt a much more aggressive attitude towards the public. I myself am very much inclined to take this position.

Architecture is involved with the world, but at the same time it has a certain autonomy. This autonomy cannot be explained in terms of traditional logic because the most interesting parts of the work are non-verbal. They operate within the terms of the work, like any art.

Architecture is the story of how we see ourselves. It is the architect's job to service everyday life.

I don't know any architects that I respect who don't have their own voice. I think the difference between architecture and the other arts is your immersion in reality.

Architecture is a negotiated art, and it's highly political, and if you want to make buildings, there is diplomacy required.

In architecture, you arrive so late. I look at doctors, lawyers I know, and they're all buying boats and bailing out at 62. My career is just getting started.

I think all good architecture should challenge you, make you start asking questions. You don't have to understand it. You may not like it. That's OK.

I've always been interested in an architecture of resistance - architecture that has some power over the way we live. Working under adversarial conditions could be seen as a plus because you're offering alternatives. Still, there are situations that make you ask the questions: 'Do I want to be a part of this?'

I have a preference for rough architecture, real, ... -Thom Mayne

I have a preference for rough architecture, real, inexpensive, unfinished.

Discovering the context

This quote reveals a preference for architectural styles that embrace rawness, authenticity, and an unfinished aesthetic. It implies an attraction to designs that prioritize simplicity, affordability, and a sense of organic or unrefined beauty, diverging from more polished or meticulously finished architectural approaches.

I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That's impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more.

I fought violently for the autonomy of architecture. It's a very passive, weak profession where people deliver a service. You want a blue door, you get a blue door. You want it to look neo-Spanish, you get neo-Spanish. Architecture with any authenticity represents resistance. Resistance is a good thing.

Somehow, architecture alters the way we think about the world and the way we behave. Any serious architecture, as a litmus test, has to be that.

I believe that artistic activities change people. You do effect change. I see architecture as a political, social and cultural act - that is its primary role.

Thom Mayne Quotes

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