top of page
.png){kind=small}
"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."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Architecture quotes
"Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us."
"If you put enough closets together, you have enough space for a room. If you put enough rooms together, you have enough room for a house. If you put enough houses together, you have space for a town, then a city, then a nation, then a world."
"It's my goal to make a building as immaterial as possible. Architecture is a very material thing. It takes a lot of resources, so why not eliminate what you don't need as long as you're able to achieve the same result?"
"The American attitude towards efficiency and execution should always underlie architecture."
"I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines."
"Today's developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise."
"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."
"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."
"Rather than wait to see what the day or future holds, why not design and plan the future you want to experience?"
"The bungalow had more to do with how Americans live today than any other building that has gone remotely by the name of architecture in our history."
Explore more quotes by 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."
"We only exist in terms of how we think we exist. Meaning every cultural development is fabricated and can be fabricated."
"I've learned that in order to achieve what I wanted, it made more sense to negotiate than to defend the autonomy of my work by pounding my fist on the table."
"Scientific reality is the modern human condition, and you can see that in the symbolic nature of my work."
"So I am totally aware that when I defend the autonomy of art I'm going counter to my own development. It's more an instinctive reaction, meant to protect the private aspect of the work, the part I am most interested in and which nowadays is at risk in our culture."
"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."
bottom of page