Thom Mayne – 8 Quotes

8 Quotes by 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

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

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

My buildings don’t speak in words but by means of their own spaciousness.

– 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

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

The huge problem in our society is the enormous ignorance of the ideas that underlie modern art.

– Thom Mayne