68 Quotes by Thom Mayne

I've grown up a little bit. I understand the importance of the negotiation. It is a collective act.

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

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.

We only exist in terms of how we think we exist. Meaning every cultural development is fabricated and can be fabricated.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.