Quotes from Thom Mayne

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.

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

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

I think all good architecture should challenge you, make you start asking questions. You don't have to understand it. You may not like it. That's OK.

The age of recalcitrance is over. The best solution is no longer just to regurgitate a 19th-century design.

Art in progress. MAK has occupied a unique and valuable space as international host for discourse between the arts and architecture.

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

I'm not just influenced by the '60s - it's who I am. I grew up with Allen Ginsberg and Che Guevara. I flirted with various forms of communism when it was way out of style. It was this really strange and creative time in music and culture, and it was fabulous.

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.

I think my clients would tell you I'm a problem solver. I'm not there to agree with people. I'm there to articulate a point of view. Am I insistent and tenacious? Absolutely. I could not get this work done if I was not.

Architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behaviour.