Transparent Motives: the ins and outs of sex-specific architecture

2016-04-15T08:20:00-04:00

If sex is the ultimate form of openness, then the architecture designed specifically to facilitate it could, up until recently anyway, be described as opaque. Even those more flagrant hot spots, like Emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea or Japan’s ubiquitous love hotels, tended to be built to obscure their purpose, at least from the outside. Indeed, it is only within the last few decades that the notion of sex as an activity that could be displayed, or at least not obscured, has come into a more public architectural vogue. Transparency, in its boundary blurring form, is a defining characteristic of architecture for sex.

“An absolutely insanely private, esoteric conversation”: Thom Mayne on ‘M’

2016-03-21T13:49:00-04:00

How does an architect tell his story? Thom Mayne, who spent decades struggling to put the idiosyncratic visual terrain of his imagination into relatable speech, has chosen to tell his story with ‘M.’ Ostensibly the latest monograph by Morphosis, ‘M’ is also in Mayne’s view a comprehensive tour of his sensibility.

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Transparent Motives: the ins and outs of sex-specific architecture

“An absolutely insanely private, esoteric conversation”: Thom Mayne on ‘M’