On today's Morning Edition, from NPR news, Susan Stamberg profiles Thom Mayne and his new 68-story Phare Tower for La Defense in Paris. Mayne gets spooked when Stamberg calls his tower "beautiful".
Janosh: There was a Spanish publication (title escapes me) in the eighties that did an article on Morphosis/Mayne referring to him as "Chico Malo". It's likely that after that, the title of "bad boy" stuck.
There's also a million "maverick rebel" anecdotes floating around in the angelino/sciarc gossip ether: the one about personally jackhammering the concrete stairs of his own home in order to force a contractor to re-do them has always been my personal favorite. It doesn't even matter if it's true as much as it's a pretty gangster thing to do.
then there's the fedora he's been known to wear...and one must remember in the 1980s particularly for the outside world he was the mouth piece for sci-arc
i haven't met him, so have no idea if he is radical as an individual, but his work is still pushing in interesting ways...and that is not easy to do when the scale of projects gets to the size he is working on...
jump/liberty bell - i lived in his university of cincinnati building so i have some cred.. but I do think it is an interesting building from afar, yeah.
...there's something to be said about the floor plan of the caltrans building: workers get the windows, bosses get the core. Such a leftist move is indeed "maverick".
As far as his bad boy image, The Usual Suspects was based on Thom: "He lets the Hungarian go.He waits until his wife and kids are in the ground and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents' friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money. And like that he was gone. Underground. Nobody has ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night. 'Rat on your pop, and Thom Mayne will get you.' And no-one ever really believes. "
"It's not only a building material," Mayne says. "It's dynamic. It's changing.".........................to hear something like that you do not have to see the project. You can easily say: it is a full of crap
come on....his buildings push boundries...call attention to something other...present. thom is the most real architect of our time...at least he is trying to be.
the problem with some is that it turns into a petty argument about what is good, what is bad, etc.....with clients its tough...if any of you who are dealing with them, are a better salesman than thom, and get your ideals across and built, more power to you. otherwise, to me it becomes another symptom of what is wrong with our profession......we slay the mighty...thom is a working stiff, just so happens he has 'suceeded' and we haven't...remember he's 63...we are....30's, ...40's....
we are the ones full of crap...we are not critics, we are architects.....maybe some architects have clients that are patons of architecture, but some...thom included, have to do what they can with the projects at had or have.
i applaud thom for what he's accomplished, particularly if you look back to the early 90's when he was almost gone from the scene..... if any of you are doing something you feel is better, show it....if not ........enough said.
I heard him lecture a couple weeks ago, he claimed to be left of Che Guevara. But he also said they put in day care in the SF Federal Building because 51% of the female employees had kids. I guess the male employees are all childless?
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Can someone tell me why Mayne always get referred to as a rebel? Is it the scarf? Is there something else that qualifies him as a maverick renegade?
Janosh: There was a Spanish publication (title escapes me) in the eighties that did an article on Morphosis/Mayne referring to him as "Chico Malo". It's likely that after that, the title of "bad boy" stuck.
There's also a million "maverick rebel" anecdotes floating around in the angelino/sciarc gossip ether: the one about personally jackhammering the concrete stairs of his own home in order to force a contractor to re-do them has always been my personal favorite. It doesn't even matter if it's true as much as it's a pretty gangster thing to do.
He used to be a bit of a hothead too, grabbing clients by the throat and the like back in the day... I thinks he's mellowed out a bit.
then there's the fedora he's been known to wear...and one must remember in the 1980s particularly for the outside world he was the mouth piece for sci-arc
oh wow, looking at the renderings that thing is really ugly.. .........(but quite possibly better than anything else i've seen him churn out?)
Janosh, it's nothing more than that look in his eyes.....
i like the building...most of his work, really.
i haven't met him, so have no idea if he is radical as an individual, but his work is still pushing in interesting ways...and that is not easy to do when the scale of projects gets to the size he is working on...
Agreed, jump. I think his work is exploratory and interesting, and forbiddingly beautiful.
jump/liberty bell - i lived in his university of cincinnati building so i have some cred.. but I do think it is an interesting building from afar, yeah.
...there's something to be said about the floor plan of the caltrans building: workers get the windows, bosses get the core. Such a leftist move is indeed "maverick".
As far as his bad boy image, The Usual Suspects was based on Thom: "He lets the Hungarian go.He waits until his wife and kids are in the ground and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents' friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money. And like that he was gone. Underground. Nobody has ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night. 'Rat on your pop, and Thom Mayne will get you.' And no-one ever really believes. "
"It's not only a building material," Mayne says. "It's dynamic. It's changing.".........................to hear something like that you do not have to see the project. You can easily say: it is a full of crap
come on....his buildings push boundries...call attention to something other...present. thom is the most real architect of our time...at least he is trying to be.
the problem with some is that it turns into a petty argument about what is good, what is bad, etc.....with clients its tough...if any of you who are dealing with them, are a better salesman than thom, and get your ideals across and built, more power to you. otherwise, to me it becomes another symptom of what is wrong with our profession......we slay the mighty...thom is a working stiff, just so happens he has 'suceeded' and we haven't...remember he's 63...we are....30's, ...40's....
we are the ones full of crap...we are not critics, we are architects.....maybe some architects have clients that are patons of architecture, but some...thom included, have to do what they can with the projects at had or have.
i applaud thom for what he's accomplished, particularly if you look back to the early 90's when he was almost gone from the scene..... if any of you are doing something you feel is better, show it....if not ........enough said.
I heard him lecture a couple weeks ago, he claimed to be left of Che Guevara. But he also said they put in day care in the SF Federal Building because 51% of the female employees had kids. I guess the male employees are all childless?
hahaha
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