Thom Mayne Quotes

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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

~ Thom Mayne

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

~ Thom Mayne

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

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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?'

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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.

~ Thom Mayne

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

~ Thom Mayne

The age of recalcitrance is over. The best solution is no longer just to regurgitate a 19th-century design.

~ Thom Mayne