Clashes and Intersections Interview Series: Thom Mayne 

"the facade people"...

I’m so glad he didn’t go into the pedagogy of an internal discourse between what is interstitial in a poetic likeness to Gestalt theory and what some might call a social, political tumultuous relationship we all can sense and must respond to responsibility as architects. One on one he doesn’t speak like that. No one should ever communicate like that!!!!

In this environment, a one on one dialogue, where he can’t rehearse his answers, TM actually speaks comprehensible English. When he’s not lecturing from a rehearsed speech filled with architectural jargon, you can actually understand him. As an educator he does an extreme disservice to his students and those looking for inspiration by pouring on the heavy esoteric jargon-heavy language. Get TM one on one and you realize he speaks like a normal person. His desire to create a mystique around his concept and make his ideas seem bigger than they are when lecturing to mostly young college age kids is really lame. Just keep it real like you did in this interview.

Hy father

Many confused people throw around false equivalency by comparing Pritzker prize to Nobel prize. Pritzker prize is just a vanity project and is a branding effort for wealthy Pritzker family name. Moreover, the prize committee is composed of mostly random buffoons who have no knowledge of building design and hence the prizes has no credibility. Its akin to trash collector in Nobel award selection committee making award for physics. Architecture is a more a humanities degree than anything. Almost all top tier us college or university do not offer this degree for a reason. Harvard graduate design school has lot of people from second, third rate undergraduate schools because most kid smart enough to get into top tier undergrad schools are too intelligent to get into this non technical profession.

Its applied art ya ding dongs. There are no theories since nothing is provable but only ideas. Only pretend man made (screwed up as much as man is capable of) complexity since art does not need to make sense