Best quotes by Thom Mayne on Architecture

Checkout quotes by Thom Mayne on Architecture

• ‟ 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 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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 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 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
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ 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 have a preference for rough architecture, real, inexpensive, unfinished.

  - 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
  

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

  - Thom Mayne