Thom Mayne
Thom Mayne
Thom Mayneis an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles. Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecturein 1972, where he is a trustee. Since then he has held teaching positions at SCI-Arc, the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is principal of Morphosis, an architectural firm in Santa Monica, California. Mayne received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in March 2005...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArchitect
Date of Birth19 January 1944
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
I think my clients would tell you I'm a problem solver. I'm not there to agree with people. I'm there to articulate a point of view. Am I insistent and tenacious? Absolutely. I could not get this work done if I was not.
I've grown up a little bit. I understand the importance of the negotiation. It is a collective act.
I think a lot of people have the Frank Lloyd Wright model in their brains. The architect comes in with this act of creation and lays it down, and that's it. But that's not me.
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 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.
We're producing spaces that accommodate human activity. And what I'm interested in is not the styling of that, but the relationship of that as it enhances that activity. And that directly connects to ideas of city-making.
Who I am as an architect and the history of my work - that's clear to anybody who hires me. But I come in literally with nothing in my brain about what the building will look like.
I'm not just influenced by the '60s - it's who I am. I grew up with Allen Ginsberg and Che Guevara. I flirted with various forms of communism when it was way out of style. It was this really strange and creative time in music and culture, and it was fabulous.
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.
In Paris, there has to be a presence. History becomes the most interesting when it's compared to the present. I mean there's a whole group of people that want to build new buildings that look like old buildings.
I'm not a tabula rasa type. In some ways, the more constraints I have, the work is more interesting to me.
The age of recalcitrance is over. The best solution is no longer just to regurgitate a 19th-century design.