Thom Mayne

New York is this cacophony - a collection of radical differences, an agreement of non sequiturs. The diversity and intensity are startling.

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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.

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

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So we can't go backwards, we can only go where the evolutionary trajectory is taking us and attune our ideas about ourselves and our existence to that course.

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

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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.

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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.

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I lived in a state of rage from 12 to 20. Until college, I was beyond an outsider. I was a voyeur of life.

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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.

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Quotes by Thom Mayne