Thom Mayne Quotes

I don't believe architecture has to speak too much. It should remain silent and let nature in the guise of sunlight and wind

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Less is more.

My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn't impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

Form follows function.

You don't need to spend a lot of money on stuff when you have amazing architecture.

I strive for an architecture from which nothing can be taken away.

I've done so much travelling in the past few years, and when you travel, you realise that we do actually have a cool, clean look in Scandinavia - it's not just Denmark - which I think brings peace if you have it in your home.

Everything man is doing in architecture is to try to go against nature. Of course we have to understand nature to know how far we have to go against nature. The secret, I think, of the future is not doing too much. All architects have the tendency to do too much.

First, there is the bare beauty of the logs themselves with their long lines and firm curves. Then there is the open charm felt of the structural features which are not hidden under plaster and ornament, but are clearly revealed, a charm felt in Japanese architecture.

To me, the fashion and architecture I like are very closely linked. Both should be clean and simple and without embellishment.

I have no requirements for a style of architecture.

My architecture is the architecture of survival.

The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.

I have a thing for clean lines and beautiful form that I attribute to my four years in Tokyo and Kyoto. I also appreciate traditional architecture and a warm palette that I think my Midwest upbringing has something to do with.

My design is no design.

I'm interested in the person I photograph. The world is so beautiful as it is; there's so much going on, which is sort of interesting. It's just so crazy, so why do I have to put some retouching on it? It's just pointless to me.

In northern architecture - the cathedrals of Europe and all the little churches - the details, the carving of stone, become necessary because the light is not there to help you very much. You have to enrich surfaces. The desert reduces form to its simplest nature. There is no need for gargoyles or flying buttresses in the desert.

Like in great painting and architecture, in couture, to make clothes you must eliminate, eliminate, eliminate to obtain the true sense of a line. You see, the more you add, the more you load on, the more it's mad. You must try to have just the silhouette, which is an intelligence in clothes.

There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.

What a house - nothin' but rooms!

The greatest architectural illusion is not Baroque fancy or Victorian flamboyant, but minimalism.

I try not to bring in anything I don't love looking at. It's about restaint ... There is something about an unfinished quality that leaves within you that sense of possibility.

Why carve? It's a better sculpture that way. I'll never improve the block. So I just started using uncarved blocks.