I am curious to learn more about Thom Mayne - his involvement at UCLA, morphosis, etc.
Has anyone taken classes from him in a masters program and developed and educated opinion they would like to share?
many books available, especially the early morphosis books, classic books i must say
also, i have this small book, published by the knowlton school of architecture, Source Books in Architecture, its about the diamond ranch highschool, with a not too bad interview between jeff kipnis (if im not mistaken, i havent looked at it for a while) and thom mayne, worth a look
But I am most interested to see this "process"he refers to in detail. There's a small sample of what it looks like in the book about the high school but I have seen little else. I want to see where the magic happens!
I like the SF building better than the LA Caltrans building, based on admittedly weak personal criteria. I also like Gehry's disney concert hall better that the morphosis LA caltrans - not because its put together better, but because the gehry is riddled with public spaces (whose shapes are formally thoughtful as opposed to the grand emptiness of the LA building). Frankly, I don't know why the gehry doesnt have locals hanging in it all the time (unless its security)?>> if i were a kid, I'd grab my friends and my weed and climb it all day.
The same critique carries over to the morphosis Cooper building: I like it, but its mostly a box with some funky mesh.
so yeah, how about thom mayne?
whither morphosis?
He gave a lecture at my school a few months back. He spoke a lot but did not have anything compelling or thought provoking. As he spoke about his projects it became increasingly apparent that his design's ends are primarily aesthetic.
Attention to aesthetics is good but surely not the only aspect of architecture proper to be considered. Mayne is not innovative or critical of conventional architectural practice. I do not believe that he would make a good teacher because of this. I was really into Morphosis until he came an gave a lecture, so these comments are not based on any prejudice that i may have.
"so these comments are not based on any prejudice that i may have"
what? So you are basing your conclusion on his teaching abilities on a single lecture?
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed having him as a prof and thesis adviser, but pointless to argue. To each their own.
And yes, he's very interested in spatial experiments, which is partially aesthetic. Spatial experience, to me, is crucial to quality architecture and a facet that takes a significant amount of skill, talent and experimentation.
God I hope not. There is already enough people on that bandwagon and none if it looks good. I personally would like to see his work return to the sharper, angular stuff and leave that little embarrassment in Paris as a failed experiment. The same could be said about Zaha who clearly now allows computer software to design her projects.
Architecture should be less like ass fat and more like life: painful, brutally dramatic and in the end someone dies.
make, I've been thinking about what you're asking and I feel like I'm finally getting it - especially with the questions you posed in your last post. You're trying to figure out specifically why these materials, these forms, these massing relationships: how do they flow from Mayne's worldview as he presents it in interviews etc.
I think you're right that his press has not seemed to answer those questions - not the things I've seen, at least, in which he does speak about a world view but not the translation of that view to built object. I'm curious too, now that I've been considering it for the last 24 hours.
I'm thinking the seeds of it must be back when Kate Mantilini was done (which is an obvious statement, that the seeds of an architect's work could be found in his earliest projects, duh). Does anyone have an old Pamphlet or anything that talks about that project? I thought I had it but I only found #12.
I've never seen Mayne lecture, but I spent a couple days with him describing his proposal for an invited competition in which I was involved. He's got an intensely curious mind, not only about architecture but about the workings of the world in general, which might be why he speaks so much about non-directly-architectural stuff.
He spoke a lot but did not have anything compelling or thought provoking. ...Mayne is not innovative or critical of conventional architectural practice. gtechture I'm in complete disagreement with you there. I hate to play the age card, but if you look back at Mayne's early work you'll see loads of really shocking, for the time, innovation and criticality - stuff that 25 years later just seems normal, in part because HE made it so. If you read Orhan's interview with him I think you'll find an ongoing willingness to push his practice as the changing world demands. How many people in their 60s can you say the same about?
I come across as a bit of a fangirl I know, but I think Mayne is really one of the greats, and sometimes overlooked. That said, I'm with you make: I'd like to know more.
I saw him lecture at GreenBuild in Chicago last year. I've been a huge fan of his/Morphosis work since the first time I paged through their first monograph way back in 1st or 2nd year, but was always curious about how he was in person...
My opinions, judging solely from this lecture are that he's very smart and capable of going head to head with any academic or intellectual that wants to blather on about theory, but he also seemed very personable, engaging, and plain spoken (a regular guy). I got the impression that his architecture is very loaded with thought and inquiry that takes a back seat to the finished architectural article - thought processes are less evident in the work than the physical, spatial, or aesthetic process. It's obvious that he has a love of drawing, modeling, and problem solving. The "what" and the "how" are more important than the "why".
I would agree with LB in regards to Mayne's "intensely curious mind and the workings of the world in general". His work is able to connect with the rest of the world outside the bubble of architecture.
I'd like to see the whole train of thought in terms of the sketches and models. Gehry shows us. He has the potter's hand. Mayne talks of his process of being something open and collaborative. This is the opposite of what Gehry does. (Mayne says that his office can run without him; Gehry is still a one-man show.) But where's the trail of sketches?
I'd like to see them. The buildings are really sexy. How did he get there?
Gehry is a one-man show because he's a paranoid old man who is constantly afraid that someone is going to steal his designs. I know people who worked there are it was like they worked for some top-secret military institute... stories about how when other architects would come and tour the office the interns would have to frantically run around and hide all of the models in the back room so all anyone saw was just people and desks. Come on Gehry, how hard is it to crumple some paper?
I brought it up because I honestly am fascinated with the guy...in the inquisitive sense.
The thought that he had nothing 'compelling or thought provoking' to say at a lecture is completely contradictory to anything and everything I've ever seen him put out. Perhaps he was talking down to his audience?
How can the process of an architect in his 60's that has done the things he's done, be questioned? I mean...what, he's just getting lucky every time, and managing to continuously fool everyone? seriously
I am more curious about how he interacts with the people in his office. For an office that can 'fun without him there' - they certainly must be a pretty tight group, and further, there must be a common understanding of the end goal.
I saw a video on the process of the competition for the Denver art museum and it showed the shortlisted Mayne, Isozaki, and Libeskind present their projects to the city commissioners/committee, whatever. The guy is intense.
Jun 5, 09 1:27 pm ·
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I have a few dozen images of an obscure Morphosis exhibit (Temple University Arch. Dept., 2001) which included a series of study models (of a couple projects I'm not sure the names of) dated 1999. I'll try to get the images online soon.
"And yes, he's very interested in spatial experiments, which is partially aesthetic. Spatial experience, to me, is crucial to quality architecture and a facet that takes a significant amount of skill, talent and experimentation."
Experience is not a quality of architecture but rather a quality of the subjective-self. A space cannot excite a concrete experience to be had by all. What you have said reinforces the fact that he is primarily interested with configuring building elements that create pleasing effects. This is OK as long as it is acknowledged. But the question is about his ability to teach and I argue that he would not be such a good teacher not because insufficient of means as much as it is not knowing the thing that needs to be done. Learning arises through meaningful inquiry. A teacher cannot teach, nor can architecture be taught, learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth. Education is self managed. Based on Thom Mayne dialogue it seems that he is not capable of developing meaningful inquiry through the asking of meaningful questions.
To Liberty Bell:
I am not critiquing Thom Mayne's architecture and do not claim to know anything at all about it. I have only been to one of his buildings in person. I am arguing solely about his ability to teach and his philosophy.
"I will give you a basic example about how we are looking at things these days; I hold a cup in my class and say we are going to redesign this, and most students immediately start to work with the shape, but smaller group will ask questions like; how many of these cups are needed every year? How many times is each cup used? How many cubic yards they will take in the garbage dump after they are tossed out? How quickly they will decompose? That is where I am moving into right now. I am more into that smaller group where they ask these questions, which is also my nature. I always ask questions. We all start as formal designers, we start asking questions, as to who we are as architects, but the questions are changing as our office culture is changing. Again, architecture is nothing more than how you articulate questions and questions you choose to address. "
This is the most insightful excerpt I could extract from the Interview and its not very insightful at all. Addressing non-formal elements of a design is not at all new ( although it may be for Morphosis) in fact it is an intrinsic aspect of design. If we take the ends of an object to be beauty for beauty's sake it would be fine art because its ends are in its self and not design because designs ends are outside of itself. There is no doubt that what Mayne is suggesting is a shift towards a more ethical way of thinking but it not by any means innovative. The questions he provided fail to break any form of conventional thinking. If we are to think of a new paradigm for a drinking vessel, an ontological investigation as well as a cultural and ecological inquiry would be needed. For example why has the cup come to be and what is the nature of the cup in relation to such and such conditions (ex: the scarcity of water, water contamination, uncertain futures...)
"Experience is not a quality of architecture but rather a quality of the subjective-self..."
- by which we should then say: "Experience is not a quality of life but rather a quality of the subjective-self." so where does that leave us?
"A teacher cannot teach, nor can architecture be taught, learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth. Education is self managed."
-maybe that is why there are so many bad students around - not because teachers can not teach, but because students are all "self-managed".
"Based on Thom Mayne dialogue it seems that he is not capable of developing meaningful inquiry through the asking of meaningful questions..."
- unless you have studied with him, i fail to see how you can rate his "teaching" based on his responses to an interview. a well-substantiated 'philosophical' position is no guarantee of quality teaching - or vice versa. Ontological or even teleological investigations are no guarantee of new paradigms.
i don't think dipping a toe into a limited amount of information is going to tell you whether mayne's teaching methods are effective or not, g. you've got to look at a history of results. mayne's are pretty good, i'd say, from his involvement in the early days of sciarc through his more recent tenure at ucla and all the myriad lectures he's done for all kinds of audiences over the years. better yet, his involvement outside of the architecture discipline, in the gsa's design program and his ability to reach non-design audiences and make them understand the value of what he does (and, by extension, what we do).
all that 'teacher cannot teach...' is just blahblah that takes away anyone's accountability for attempting to teach anything. we know from our architectural educations that things are taught in architecture school - not just knowledge imparted, but examples set, a huge variety of things discussed and explored and tested, and, yes, meaningful questions asked.
'learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth.': really? you still believe in truth after an architectural education?! the more i learn, the more i understand that everything is always in play, is relative, and is some constantly shifting shade of gray instead of black and white, i.e., truth is a chimera. learning, coming from a design background, is more about constantly asking questions; good questions that generate more questions being a goal.
Can't be incredulous about someone's belief in truth. Big picture breask down to two camps -- those who believe in absolute truth and those who believe in relative truth. Gtech appears to be on the other side, although if pressed he may in fact be on your side.
'learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth' -- As I am in the other camp, I do not disagree with this statement.
I looked through some it. I find the quondam site to be confusing and a bit dense. Is it yours? It's a little heavy on the obfuscation. What's the logic behind the numbering system?
Anyway it's a start. I am looking for a soup-to-nuts story board of the birth of one of Mayne's buildings.
I don't get this image. I assume it's a screen. Mayne rejects the modernist love of glass and transparency for the perforated metal screen.
Mars 2006 - 39,90 €
Sous la direction de Frédéric Migayrou
208 pages, 700 ill. noir et blanc et couleurs, format 23,5 x 28 cm. relié
FO 7096
ISBN 978-2-84426-297-4
Diffusion Union-Distribution
Edited by Frédéric Migayrou.
Morphosis, the American architects' office founded in 1972 by Jim Stafford and Tom Mayne (Pritzker prize in 2005), has taken part in numerous international competitions, notably for the Olympic Village in New York in 2012.
The catalogue presents the exhibition and its staging, a section featuring 20 projects (completed, on the drawing board or presented at competitions), accompanied by 3D photographs and images, an interview with Thom Mayne by Frédéric Migayrou, and a translation of one of his founding texts, "Connected isolation".
Frédéric Migayrou shows the work of Morphosis while making a semantic analysis of the entire corpus of texts that accompany it with the help of two search and word-processing software, Tropes and Zoom, which highlight the principal themes and concepts that underpin the agency's work. This analysis is presented in the form of a RD graph made up of spheres whose size is proportionate to the number of appearances of the theme studied, and with links showing the interconnections between these ideas.
this catalogue is from the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, in mid-2006.
I cannot claim to know him through an interview but I can detect a prevailing attitude. If you believe that he is a good teacher please tell us why. I am only trying to investigate this and wether there is a genuine interest in his knowledge and working method or if it is a superficial interest in someone who may be just a fashionable architect.
one interesting aspect about Thom Mayne and Morphosis (as eluded to by LB) is that they have been around long enough to be both "fashionable" and "unfashionable".
Thom was seen as the prototypical "angry man" back in the 70's and 80's, having both been at the forefront in the formation of SCI-Arc and in a type of LA_architecture that wasn't all cosy sunny-southern-california, nor was it part of the emerging Frank Gehry free-form formalism.
Thom has been consistently part of the educational cycles of both SCI-Arc and UCLA, much less part-time gigs at Harvard, Yale, etc.
Thom has a certain intensity, that is based on conviction that architecture is important in the progress of cultures and social development. it is certainly formally driven and not necessarily propelled by well-structured philosophical foundations - but it would be wrong to assume that it doesn't have conceptual or theoretical foundations. it is certainly based on productive strategies - that is on making lots of drawings, models and 3d representations to try and understand spatial and organizational potentials.
Thom and Morphosis have succeeded as particular representatives of contemporary architectural discourse out of a doggedness and persistence of their specific way of seeing the world that has in spite of itself become successful.
while much has been made of the "superficial" or "surface" interests in their work, i think their projects for both the Diamond Ranch High School and the Perth Amboy High School show that they are also interested and capable in the development of sophisticated and compelling investigations into new spatial arrangements for specific project requirements. this is at the level of the plan, not the elevation.
Architecture, to me, is about space and experience. You can bs your way around that anyway you like, but I think most people would understand that statement.
He's an incredibly intense man, with a passion I have never seen an equal to (although I do admire Gehry's unique pursuit as well, and probably others I have not met).
Not much point in arguing anything. My simple statement would be: Go visit Diamond Ranch when no one is there, then in use. Make a conclusion after that.
Jun 6, 09 7:23 pm ·
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make, Quondam is my site. It's the first virtual museum of architecture, online since 21 November 1996. Earlier this year thingsmagazine.net described Quondam as "Stephen Lauf's epically impenetrable 'online collage', a real labyrinth of a website," and that suits me just fine.
Yes, Quondam is dense, and I don't even know where everything is, so I utilize site-specific google searches to find things.
The numbering system has no meaningful significance beyond its sequentiality; file names, that's all.
The specific image you ask about also has no intended significance in terms of how Thom Mayne may see things, but, as you've now demonstrated, it is capable of inspiring a significance. And that's more or less the point...
"Probably the most incoherent, uninformative and poorly presented talk I have ever heard. Thom Mayne clearly finds it easier to construct a buliding that he does a sentence."
Nothing against Mayne, (i'm a fan of morphosis).
I think you could easily replace this name in the above comment with almost all starchitects or even most mortal architects.
Those comments after the TED talk are disappointing, as I always assumed most TED fans are among the more open-minded people around.
This one isn't so bad, but I found it very funny:
What amazed me most about this talk was hearing the architect call his work "organic." In my view, it was only organic in the way that a crystal might be considered organic.
Um, yeah, because crystalline structures are, you know, found in nature and all, I guess "organic" doesn't have to *only* mean droopy, moist, and green? ;-)
One definition that I have heard is that the enclosure of organic architecture is also the structure. In post and beam, they are independent of each other.
Mayne's mastery of screens is a really provocative rejection of the modernist ideal of transparency with its large, clear glazing.
I'd like to see the process of manipulating these screens. How many models does he make? What are these rules or heuristics that he talks about in his lectures? How many times before he has decided that they are done? Is it stainless? What does it cost? How do users feel about not have windows to look out through?
Im with you on the screens.
I was at a HdeM project in basel with manipulated and warped screens and i thought it was great / inside AND outside, but it was just a door.
perhaps this is screen overload? I envision every sunny socal day to be gray from the inside out.
My definition would make a building like the Cooper Union, a member of the "heavy(or not so)-dress" species. That's a post and beam as the dress is fitted onto a structural grid. So it's NOT organic.
how about thom mayne?
I am curious to learn more about Thom Mayne - his involvement at UCLA, morphosis, etc.
Has anyone taken classes from him in a masters program and developed and educated opinion they would like to share?
many books available, especially the early morphosis books, classic books i must say
also, i have this small book, published by the knowlton school of architecture, Source Books in Architecture, its about the diamond ranch highschool, with a not too bad interview between jeff kipnis (if im not mistaken, i havent looked at it for a while) and thom mayne, worth a look
But I am most interested to see this "process"he refers to in detail. There's a small sample of what it looks like in the book about the high school but I have seen little else. I want to see where the magic happens!
then this:
and finally this:
equal this:
and that's process!
check out orhan's interview with thom from a year or so ago. in the features section.
Thanks...
Yeah.
Does anyone have an answer rather than a sophomoric punch line?
Thanks, Steven! :-)
Every day I walk by San Francisco Federal Building + I imagine it w/o the screen structure. The screen is not the form.
I like the SF building better than the LA Caltrans building, based on admittedly weak personal criteria. I also like Gehry's disney concert hall better that the morphosis LA caltrans - not because its put together better, but because the gehry is riddled with public spaces (whose shapes are formally thoughtful as opposed to the grand emptiness of the LA building). Frankly, I don't know why the gehry doesnt have locals hanging in it all the time (unless its security)?>> if i were a kid, I'd grab my friends and my weed and climb it all day.
The same critique carries over to the morphosis Cooper building: I like it, but its mostly a box with some funky mesh.
so yeah, how about thom mayne?
whither morphosis?
Yes. What is it you are looking for? I assume there are many students of his lurking around here.
My baby he dont talk sweet
He ain't got much to say
But he loves me, loves me, loves me
I know that he loves me anyway
And maybe he dont dress fine
But i dont really mind
Because every time he pulls me near
I just want to cheer
Lets hear it for the boy
Lets give the boy a hand
Lets hear it for my baby
You know you go to understand
Whoa, maybe he's no romeo
But he's my lovin one-man show
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Let's hear it for the boy
He gave a lecture at my school a few months back. He spoke a lot but did not have anything compelling or thought provoking. As he spoke about his projects it became increasingly apparent that his design's ends are primarily aesthetic.
Attention to aesthetics is good but surely not the only aspect of architecture proper to be considered. Mayne is not innovative or critical of conventional architectural practice. I do not believe that he would make a good teacher because of this. I was really into Morphosis until he came an gave a lecture, so these comments are not based on any prejudice that i may have.
this thread is dribble
"so these comments are not based on any prejudice that i may have"
what? So you are basing your conclusion on his teaching abilities on a single lecture?
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed having him as a prof and thesis adviser, but pointless to argue. To each their own.
And yes, he's very interested in spatial experiments, which is partially aesthetic. Spatial experience, to me, is crucial to quality architecture and a facet that takes a significant amount of skill, talent and experimentation.
trace,
Tell us more.
What were his crits like?
What kind of spatial experiments did he undertake?
Is he interested in fabric and draping?
"Is he interested in fabric and draping?"
God I hope not. There is already enough people on that bandwagon and none if it looks good. I personally would like to see his work return to the sharper, angular stuff and leave that little embarrassment in Paris as a failed experiment. The same could be said about Zaha who clearly now allows computer software to design her projects.
Architecture should be less like ass fat and more like life: painful, brutally dramatic and in the end someone dies.
make, I've been thinking about what you're asking and I feel like I'm finally getting it - especially with the questions you posed in your last post. You're trying to figure out specifically why these materials, these forms, these massing relationships: how do they flow from Mayne's worldview as he presents it in interviews etc.
I think you're right that his press has not seemed to answer those questions - not the things I've seen, at least, in which he does speak about a world view but not the translation of that view to built object. I'm curious too, now that I've been considering it for the last 24 hours.
I'm thinking the seeds of it must be back when Kate Mantilini was done (which is an obvious statement, that the seeds of an architect's work could be found in his earliest projects, duh). Does anyone have an old Pamphlet or anything that talks about that project? I thought I had it but I only found #12.
I've never seen Mayne lecture, but I spent a couple days with him describing his proposal for an invited competition in which I was involved. He's got an intensely curious mind, not only about architecture but about the workings of the world in general, which might be why he speaks so much about non-directly-architectural stuff.
He spoke a lot but did not have anything compelling or thought provoking. ...Mayne is not innovative or critical of conventional architectural practice. gtechture I'm in complete disagreement with you there. I hate to play the age card, but if you look back at Mayne's early work you'll see loads of really shocking, for the time, innovation and criticality - stuff that 25 years later just seems normal, in part because HE made it so. If you read Orhan's interview with him I think you'll find an ongoing willingness to push his practice as the changing world demands. How many people in their 60s can you say the same about?
I come across as a bit of a fangirl I know, but I think Mayne is really one of the greats, and sometimes overlooked. That said, I'm with you make: I'd like to know more.
I saw him lecture at GreenBuild in Chicago last year. I've been a huge fan of his/Morphosis work since the first time I paged through their first monograph way back in 1st or 2nd year, but was always curious about how he was in person...
My opinions, judging solely from this lecture are that he's very smart and capable of going head to head with any academic or intellectual that wants to blather on about theory, but he also seemed very personable, engaging, and plain spoken (a regular guy). I got the impression that his architecture is very loaded with thought and inquiry that takes a back seat to the finished architectural article - thought processes are less evident in the work than the physical, spatial, or aesthetic process. It's obvious that he has a love of drawing, modeling, and problem solving. The "what" and the "how" are more important than the "why".
I would agree with LB in regards to Mayne's "intensely curious mind and the workings of the world in general". His work is able to connect with the rest of the world outside the bubble of architecture.
LB,
I'd like to see the whole train of thought in terms of the sketches and models. Gehry shows us. He has the potter's hand. Mayne talks of his process of being something open and collaborative. This is the opposite of what Gehry does. (Mayne says that his office can run without him; Gehry is still a one-man show.) But where's the trail of sketches?
I'd like to see them. The buildings are really sexy. How did he get there?
Gehry is a one-man show because he's a paranoid old man who is constantly afraid that someone is going to steal his designs. I know people who worked there are it was like they worked for some top-secret military institute... stories about how when other architects would come and tour the office the interns would have to frantically run around and hide all of the models in the back room so all anyone saw was just people and desks. Come on Gehry, how hard is it to crumple some paper?
formZ
cool...
I brought it up because I honestly am fascinated with the guy...in the inquisitive sense.
The thought that he had nothing 'compelling or thought provoking' to say at a lecture is completely contradictory to anything and everything I've ever seen him put out. Perhaps he was talking down to his audience?
How can the process of an architect in his 60's that has done the things he's done, be questioned? I mean...what, he's just getting lucky every time, and managing to continuously fool everyone? seriously
I am more curious about how he interacts with the people in his office. For an office that can 'fun without him there' - they certainly must be a pretty tight group, and further, there must be a common understanding of the end goal.
I saw a video on the process of the competition for the Denver art museum and it showed the shortlisted Mayne, Isozaki, and Libeskind present their projects to the city commissioners/committee, whatever. The guy is intense.
I have a few dozen images of an obscure Morphosis exhibit (Temple University Arch. Dept., 2001) which included a series of study models (of a couple projects I'm not sure the names of) dated 1999. I'll try to get the images online soon.
To Trace:
"And yes, he's very interested in spatial experiments, which is partially aesthetic. Spatial experience, to me, is crucial to quality architecture and a facet that takes a significant amount of skill, talent and experimentation."
Experience is not a quality of architecture but rather a quality of the subjective-self. A space cannot excite a concrete experience to be had by all. What you have said reinforces the fact that he is primarily interested with configuring building elements that create pleasing effects. This is OK as long as it is acknowledged. But the question is about his ability to teach and I argue that he would not be such a good teacher not because insufficient of means as much as it is not knowing the thing that needs to be done. Learning arises through meaningful inquiry. A teacher cannot teach, nor can architecture be taught, learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth. Education is self managed. Based on Thom Mayne dialogue it seems that he is not capable of developing meaningful inquiry through the asking of meaningful questions.
To Liberty Bell:
I am not critiquing Thom Mayne's architecture and do not claim to know anything at all about it. I have only been to one of his buildings in person. I am arguing solely about his ability to teach and his philosophy.
"I will give you a basic example about how we are looking at things these days; I hold a cup in my class and say we are going to redesign this, and most students immediately start to work with the shape, but smaller group will ask questions like; how many of these cups are needed every year? How many times is each cup used? How many cubic yards they will take in the garbage dump after they are tossed out? How quickly they will decompose? That is where I am moving into right now. I am more into that smaller group where they ask these questions, which is also my nature. I always ask questions. We all start as formal designers, we start asking questions, as to who we are as architects, but the questions are changing as our office culture is changing. Again, architecture is nothing more than how you articulate questions and questions you choose to address. "
This is the most insightful excerpt I could extract from the Interview and its not very insightful at all. Addressing non-formal elements of a design is not at all new ( although it may be for Morphosis) in fact it is an intrinsic aspect of design. If we take the ends of an object to be beauty for beauty's sake it would be fine art because its ends are in its self and not design because designs ends are outside of itself. There is no doubt that what Mayne is suggesting is a shift towards a more ethical way of thinking but it not by any means innovative. The questions he provided fail to break any form of conventional thinking. If we are to think of a new paradigm for a drinking vessel, an ontological investigation as well as a cultural and ecological inquiry would be needed. For example why has the cup come to be and what is the nature of the cup in relation to such and such conditions (ex: the scarcity of water, water contamination, uncertain futures...)
re: gtechture-
"Experience is not a quality of architecture but rather a quality of the subjective-self..."
- by which we should then say: "Experience is not a quality of life but rather a quality of the subjective-self." so where does that leave us?
"A teacher cannot teach, nor can architecture be taught, learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth. Education is self managed."
-maybe that is why there are so many bad students around - not because teachers can not teach, but because students are all "self-managed".
"Based on Thom Mayne dialogue it seems that he is not capable of developing meaningful inquiry through the asking of meaningful questions..."
- unless you have studied with him, i fail to see how you can rate his "teaching" based on his responses to an interview. a well-substantiated 'philosophical' position is no guarantee of quality teaching - or vice versa. Ontological or even teleological investigations are no guarantee of new paradigms.
i don't think dipping a toe into a limited amount of information is going to tell you whether mayne's teaching methods are effective or not, g. you've got to look at a history of results. mayne's are pretty good, i'd say, from his involvement in the early days of sciarc through his more recent tenure at ucla and all the myriad lectures he's done for all kinds of audiences over the years. better yet, his involvement outside of the architecture discipline, in the gsa's design program and his ability to reach non-design audiences and make them understand the value of what he does (and, by extension, what we do).
all that 'teacher cannot teach...' is just blahblah that takes away anyone's accountability for attempting to teach anything. we know from our architectural educations that things are taught in architecture school - not just knowledge imparted, but examples set, a huge variety of things discussed and explored and tested, and, yes, meaningful questions asked.
'learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth.': really? you still believe in truth after an architectural education?! the more i learn, the more i understand that everything is always in play, is relative, and is some constantly shifting shade of gray instead of black and white, i.e., truth is a chimera. learning, coming from a design background, is more about constantly asking questions; good questions that generate more questions being a goal.
Can't be incredulous about someone's belief in truth. Big picture breask down to two camps -- those who believe in absolute truth and those who believe in relative truth. Gtech appears to be on the other side, although if pressed he may in fact be on your side.
'learning is contingent on the individuals desire for truth' -- As I am in the other camp, I do not disagree with this statement.
Morphosis Exhibit, 2001.
3816-3826, 3833, 3834
Le Q,
I looked through some it. I find the quondam site to be confusing and a bit dense. Is it yours? It's a little heavy on the obfuscation. What's the logic behind the numbering system?
Anyway it's a start. I am looking for a soup-to-nuts story board of the birth of one of Mayne's buildings.
I don't get this image. I assume it's a screen. Mayne rejects the modernist love of glass and transparency for the perforated metal screen.
Is that what this shows?
Morphosis
Mars 2006 - 39,90 €
Sous la direction de Frédéric Migayrou
208 pages, 700 ill. noir et blanc et couleurs, format 23,5 x 28 cm. relié
FO 7096
ISBN 978-2-84426-297-4
Diffusion Union-Distribution
Edited by Frédéric Migayrou.
Morphosis, the American architects' office founded in 1972 by Jim Stafford and Tom Mayne (Pritzker prize in 2005), has taken part in numerous international competitions, notably for the Olympic Village in New York in 2012.
The catalogue presents the exhibition and its staging, a section featuring 20 projects (completed, on the drawing board or presented at competitions), accompanied by 3D photographs and images, an interview with Thom Mayne by Frédéric Migayrou, and a translation of one of his founding texts, "Connected isolation".
Frédéric Migayrou shows the work of Morphosis while making a semantic analysis of the entire corpus of texts that accompany it with the help of two search and word-processing software, Tropes and Zoom, which highlight the principal themes and concepts that underpin the agency's work. This analysis is presented in the form of a RD graph made up of spheres whose size is proportionate to the number of appearances of the theme studied, and with links showing the interconnections between these ideas.
this catalogue is from the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, in mid-2006.
To dlb:
I cannot claim to know him through an interview but I can detect a prevailing attitude. If you believe that he is a good teacher please tell us why. I am only trying to investigate this and wether there is a genuine interest in his knowledge and working method or if it is a superficial interest in someone who may be just a fashionable architect.
one interesting aspect about Thom Mayne and Morphosis (as eluded to by LB) is that they have been around long enough to be both "fashionable" and "unfashionable".
Thom was seen as the prototypical "angry man" back in the 70's and 80's, having both been at the forefront in the formation of SCI-Arc and in a type of LA_architecture that wasn't all cosy sunny-southern-california, nor was it part of the emerging Frank Gehry free-form formalism.
Thom has been consistently part of the educational cycles of both SCI-Arc and UCLA, much less part-time gigs at Harvard, Yale, etc.
Thom has a certain intensity, that is based on conviction that architecture is important in the progress of cultures and social development. it is certainly formally driven and not necessarily propelled by well-structured philosophical foundations - but it would be wrong to assume that it doesn't have conceptual or theoretical foundations. it is certainly based on productive strategies - that is on making lots of drawings, models and 3d representations to try and understand spatial and organizational potentials.
Thom and Morphosis have succeeded as particular representatives of contemporary architectural discourse out of a doggedness and persistence of their specific way of seeing the world that has in spite of itself become successful.
while much has been made of the "superficial" or "surface" interests in their work, i think their projects for both the Diamond Ranch High School and the Perth Amboy High School show that they are also interested and capable in the development of sophisticated and compelling investigations into new spatial arrangements for specific project requirements. this is at the level of the plan, not the elevation.
Architecture, to me, is about space and experience. You can bs your way around that anyway you like, but I think most people would understand that statement.
He's an incredibly intense man, with a passion I have never seen an equal to (although I do admire Gehry's unique pursuit as well, and probably others I have not met).
Not much point in arguing anything. My simple statement would be: Go visit Diamond Ranch when no one is there, then in use. Make a conclusion after that.
make, Quondam is my site. It's the first virtual museum of architecture, online since 21 November 1996. Earlier this year thingsmagazine.net described Quondam as "Stephen Lauf's epically impenetrable 'online collage', a real labyrinth of a website," and that suits me just fine.
Yes, Quondam is dense, and I don't even know where everything is, so I utilize site-specific google searches to find things.
The numbering system has no meaningful significance beyond its sequentiality; file names, that's all.
The specific image you ask about also has no intended significance in terms of how Thom Mayne may see things, but, as you've now demonstrated, it is capable of inspiring a significance. And that's more or less the point...
Thom Mayne also gave a presentation at TED, and Charlie Rose also interviewed him, maybe that will help a bit.
comment on the talk...
"Probably the most incoherent, uninformative and poorly presented talk I have ever heard. Thom Mayne clearly finds it easier to construct a buliding that he does a sentence."
Nothing against Mayne, (i'm a fan of morphosis).
I think you could easily replace this name in the above comment with almost all starchitects or even most mortal architects.
Thom Mayne on Charlie Rose
http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=29355_0_42_0_C
Those comments after the TED talk are disappointing, as I always assumed most TED fans are among the more open-minded people around.
This one isn't so bad, but I found it very funny:
What amazed me most about this talk was hearing the architect call his work "organic." In my view, it was only organic in the way that a crystal might be considered organic.
Um, yeah, because crystalline structures are, you know, found in nature and all, I guess "organic" doesn't have to *only* mean droopy, moist, and green? ;-)
nice one, LiBe!
organic architecture...
Organic architecture is like natural food...
;-)
One definition that I have heard is that the enclosure of organic architecture is also the structure. In post and beam, they are independent of each other.
Mayne's mastery of screens is a really provocative rejection of the modernist ideal of transparency with its large, clear glazing.
I'd like to see the process of manipulating these screens. How many models does he make? What are these rules or heuristics that he talks about in his lectures? How many times before he has decided that they are done? Is it stainless? What does it cost? How do users feel about not have windows to look out through?
make.
Im with you on the screens.
I was at a HdeM project in basel with manipulated and warped screens and i thought it was great / inside AND outside, but it was just a door.
perhaps this is screen overload? I envision every sunny socal day to be gray from the inside out.
My definition would make a building like the Cooper Union, a member of the "heavy(or not so)-dress" species. That's a post and beam as the dress is fitted onto a structural grid. So it's NOT organic.
It's like a battleship hull:
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