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" It's too simplistic to advance the notion of the autonomy of art as a reason for turning away from the public. You can have autonomy and simultaneously have connections with the social and political world. "

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" 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

Aesthetic

Walking

Value

" Look around at day-to-day life for ideas, and it finds its way into your work. "

" Descriptions of my work depress me. They make me feel pinned down. "

Thom Mayne

Down

Make

" Our idea of nature is increasingly being determined by scientific developments. And they have become decisive for our image of reality. "

" I believe that artistic activities change people. You do effect change. I see architecture as a political, social and cultural act - that is its primary role. "

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

" Architecture is a negotiated art, and it's highly political, and if you want to make buildings, there is diplomacy required. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Thom Mayne

Order

Work

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Large-scale public projects require the agreement of large numbers of people. "

" I'm a private person by nature. I live in my brain half the time, not the world, and I'm not a natural negotiator. But I've learned to negotiate. "

" 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. "

" Scientific reality is the modern human condition, and you can see that in the symbolic nature of my work. "

" No matter what I've done, what I've tried to do, everybody says it can't be done. And it's continuous across the complete spectrum of the various kind of realities that you confront with your ideas. "

" For me the meaning of my work is much more fluid. "

Thom Mayne

Much

Meaning

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

" 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

Art

Attitude

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Thom Mayne

Backwards

Our

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