ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Thom Mayne - Architect
Founder of the influential studio Morphosis, and co-founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne marries conceptual ideas with form, challenging the way we perceive structure, building and the environment.

Why you should listen

Widely regarded as one of the world's most provocative architects, Thom Mayne is only interested in exploring the new, the present and the now. For him, architecture is not a matter of producing a readily imaginable building, but is instead a starting point for a larger discussion. The output of his Santa Monica-based studio, Morphosis, shows the results of the negotiations between concept and reality.

As Mayne describes things, the only constant in his professional career has been people telling him something can't be done. But he and his studio continue to produce astonishing work for clients worldwide, including government offices, hospitals, restaurants, residences and schools. Redefining how buildings work both within themselves and within their environment, Mayne and Morphosis are forging dramatic new landscapes for a startlingly modern world.

He joined President Obama's initiative Turnaround: Arts, which uses art education as a tool for success in struggling schools. 

More profile about the speaker
Thom Mayne | Speaker | TED.com
TED2005

Thom Mayne: How architecture can connect us

Filmed:
830,222 views

Architect Thom Mayne has never been one to take the easy option, and this whistle-stop tour of the buildings he's created makes you glad for it. These are big ideas cast in material form.
- Architect
Founder of the influential studio Morphosis, and co-founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne marries conceptual ideas with form, challenging the way we perceive structure, building and the environment. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:26
I don't know your name. Audience Member: Howard. Howard.
0
1000
2000
00:28
Thom Mayne: Howard? I'm sitting next to Howard. I don't know Howard, obviously,
1
3000
5000
00:33
and he's going, I hope you're not next.
2
8000
2000
00:35
(Laughter)
3
10000
7000
00:42
Amazing. Amazing performance.
4
17000
2000
00:44
I kind of erased everything in my brain to follow that.
5
19000
5000
00:49
Let me start some place. I'm interested --
6
24000
5000
00:54
I kind of do the same thing, but I don't move my body. (Laughter)
7
29000
4000
00:58
And instead of using human figures to develop ideas of time and space,
8
33000
10000
01:09
I work in the mineral world. I work with more or less inert matter.
9
44000
4000
01:13
And I organize it. And, well, it's also a bit different
10
48000
4000
01:17
because an architect versus, let's say, a dance company
11
52000
4000
01:21
finally is a negotiation between one's private world,
12
56000
5000
01:26
one's conceptual world, the world of ideas, the world of aspirations,
13
61000
5000
01:31
of inventions, with the relationship of the exterior world
14
66000
4000
01:35
and all the limitations, the naysayers.
15
70000
5000
01:40
Because I have to say, for my whole career,
16
75000
3000
01:43
if there's anything that's been consistent, it's been that you can't do it.
17
78000
3000
01:46
No matter what I've done, what I've tried to do,
18
81000
2000
01:48
everybody says it can't be done.
19
83000
2000
01:50
And it's continuous across the complete spectrum of the various
20
85000
4000
01:54
kind of realities that you confront with your ideas.
21
89000
2000
01:56
And to be an architect, somehow you have to negotiate between left and right,
22
91000
5000
02:01
and you have to negotiate between this very private place where ideas take place
23
96000
4000
02:05
and the outside world, and then make it understood.
24
100000
4000
02:09
I can start any number of places, because this process is also --
25
104000
5000
02:14
I think -- very different from some of the morning sessions,
26
109000
3000
02:17
which you had such a kind of very clear, such a lineal idea,
27
112000
4000
02:21
like the last one, say, with Howard,
28
116000
2000
02:23
that I think the creative process in architecture,
29
118000
3000
02:26
the design process, is extremely circuitous. It's labyrinthine.
30
121000
5000
02:31
It's Calvino's idea of the quickest way between two points
31
126000
4000
02:35
is the circuitous line, not the straight line.
32
130000
2000
02:37
And definitely my life has been part of that.
33
132000
2000
02:39
I'm going to start with some simple kind of
34
134000
2000
02:41
notions of how we organize things.
35
136000
2000
02:43
But basically, what we do is, we try to give coherence to the world.
36
138000
4000
02:47
We make physical things, buildings
37
142000
2000
02:49
that become a part in an accretional process; they make cities.
38
144000
3000
02:52
And those things are the reflection of the processes,
39
147000
5000
02:57
and the time that they are made.
40
152000
2000
02:59
And what I'm doing is attempting to synthesize the way one sees the world
41
154000
5000
03:04
and the territories which are useful as generative material.
42
159000
5000
03:09
Because, really, all I'm interested in, always, as an architect,
43
164000
4000
03:13
is the way things are produced because that's what I do. Right?
44
168000
4000
03:17
And it's not based on an a priori notion.
45
172000
2000
03:19
I have no interest at all in conceiving something in my brain
46
174000
4000
03:23
and saying, "This is what it looks like." In fact, somebody mentioned --
47
178000
3000
03:26
Ewan, maybe it was you in your introduction --
48
181000
2000
03:28
about this is what architects --
49
183000
2000
03:30
did somebody say it's what business people come to,
50
185000
2000
03:32
it's what the corporate world comes to
51
187000
2000
03:34
when they want to make it look like something at the end of the line? Huh. Wow.
52
189000
4000
03:38
It doesn't work that way for me at all.
53
193000
2000
03:40
I have no interest in that whatsoever.
54
195000
2000
03:42
Architecture is the beginning of something, because it's --
55
197000
2000
03:44
if you're not involved in first principles,
56
199000
2000
03:46
if you're not involved in the absolute,
57
201000
2000
03:48
the beginning of that generative process, it's cake decoration.
58
203000
5000
03:53
And I've nothing wrong with cake decoration and cake decorators,
59
208000
3000
03:56
if anybody's involved in cake decorations --
60
211000
2000
03:58
it's not what I'm interested in doing. (Laughter)
61
213000
2000
04:00
And so, in the formation of things, in giving it form,
62
215000
5000
04:05
in concretizing these things,
63
220000
3000
04:08
it starts with some notion of how one organizes.
64
223000
3000
04:11
And I've had for 30 years an interest in a series of complexities
65
226000
5000
04:16
where a series of forces are brought to bear,
66
231000
3000
04:19
and to understand the nature of the final result of that,
67
234000
4000
04:23
representing the building itself.
68
238000
2000
04:26
There's been a continual relationship between inventions,
69
241000
4000
04:30
which are private, and reality, which has been important to me.
70
245000
4000
04:34
A project which is part of an exhibition in Copenhagen 10 years ago,
71
249000
5000
04:39
which was the modeling of a hippocampus --
72
254000
2000
04:41
the territory of the brain that records short-term memory --
73
256000
3000
04:44
and the documentation of that, the imaginative and documentation of that
74
259000
4000
04:48
through a series of drawings which literally attempt to organize that experience.
75
263000
5000
04:53
And it had to do with the notion of walking a kilometer,
76
268000
4000
04:57
observing every kilometer a particular object of desire,
77
272000
3000
05:00
and then placing that within this.
78
275000
2000
05:02
And the notion was that I could make an organization
79
277000
3000
05:05
not built on normal coherencies, but built on non-sequiturs, built on randomness.
80
280000
6000
05:11
And I'd been extremely interested in this notion of randomness
81
286000
3000
05:14
as it produces architectural work
82
289000
2000
05:16
and as it definitely connects to the notion of the city,
83
291000
2000
05:18
an accretional notion of the city,
84
293000
2000
05:20
and that led to various ideas of organization.
85
295000
3000
05:23
And then this led to broader ideas of buildings
86
298000
3000
05:26
that come together through the multiplicity of systems.
87
301000
4000
05:30
And it's not any single system that makes the work.
88
305000
3000
05:33
It's the relationship -- it's the dynamics between the systems --
89
308000
3000
05:36
which have the power to transform and invent
90
311000
3000
05:39
and produce an architecture that is -- that would otherwise not exist.
91
314000
4000
05:45
And those systems could be identified,
92
320000
2000
05:47
and they could be grouped together.
93
322000
1000
05:48
And of course, today, with the technology of the computer
94
323000
3000
05:51
and with the rapid prototyping, etc., we have the mechanisms
95
326000
4000
05:55
to understand and to respond to these systems,
96
330000
3000
05:58
and to allow them to adjust to the various accommodations of functionalities
97
333000
5000
06:03
because that's all we do.
98
338000
2000
06:05
We're producing spaces that accommodate human activity.
99
340000
3000
06:08
And what I'm interested in is not the styling of that,
100
343000
3000
06:11
but the relationship of that as it enhances that activity.
101
346000
5000
06:17
And that directly connects to ideas of city-making.
102
352000
3000
06:20
This is a project that we just finished in Penang
103
355000
2000
06:22
for a very, very large city project that came directly out of this process,
104
357000
4000
06:26
which is the result of the multiplicity of forces that produce it.
105
361000
4000
06:32
And the project -- again, enormous, enormous competition --
106
367000
2000
06:34
on the Hudson River and in New York
107
369000
2000
06:36
that we were asked to do three years ago, which uses these processes.
108
371000
3000
06:39
And what you're looking at are possibilities that have to do
109
374000
3000
06:42
with the generation of the city as one applies a methodology
110
377000
6000
06:48
that uses notions of these multiple forces,
111
383000
3000
06:51
that deals with the enormity of the problem, the complexity of the problem,
112
386000
5000
06:56
when we're designing cities at larger and larger aggregates.
113
391000
3000
06:59
Because one of the issues today is
114
394000
2000
07:01
that the economic aggregate is driving the development aggregate,
115
396000
5000
07:06
and as the aggregates get larger we require
116
401000
2000
07:08
more and more complex investigation processes to solve these problems.
117
403000
5000
07:13
And that led us directly to the Olympic Village.
118
408000
3000
07:16
I was in New York on Monday presenting it to the IOC.
119
411000
3000
07:19
We won the competition -- what was it, nine months ago?
120
414000
4000
07:23
Again, a direct reflection from using these processes
121
418000
3000
07:26
to develop extremely complicated, very large-scale organisms.
122
421000
5000
07:31
And then, also, was working with broad strategies.
123
426000
3000
07:34
In this case, we only used 15 of the 60 acres of land,
124
429000
5000
07:39
and the 45 acres was a park and would become the legacy of the Olympic Village.
125
434000
4000
07:43
And it would become the second largest park in the boroughs, etc.
126
438000
4000
07:47
Its position, of course, in the middle of Manhattan -- it's on Hunter's Point.
127
442000
4000
07:51
And then the broader ideas of city-making
128
446000
4000
07:55
start having direct influences on architecture,
129
450000
3000
07:58
on the elements that make up the broader scheme,
130
453000
3000
08:01
the buildings themselves, and start guiding us.
131
456000
3000
08:06
Architecture for me has been an investigation of a multiplicity of forces
132
461000
4000
08:10
that could come from literally any place.
133
465000
2000
08:12
And so I can start this discussion in any number of places,
134
467000
4000
08:16
and I've chosen three or four to talk about.
135
471000
3000
08:19
And it has also to do with an interest in
136
474000
5000
08:24
the vast kind of territory that architecture touches.
137
479000
4000
08:28
It literally is connected to anything in terms of knowledge base.
138
483000
5000
08:33
There's just no place that it doesn't somehow
139
488000
3000
08:36
have a connective tissue to.
140
491000
2000
08:38
This is Jim Dine, and it's the absence of presence, etc.
141
493000
3000
08:41
It's the clothing, the skin, without the presence of the character.
142
496000
4000
08:45
It became kind of an idea for the notion of the surface of a work,
143
500000
4000
08:49
and it was used in a project where we could unravel that surface,
144
504000
5000
08:54
and it was a figurative idea that was going to be folded
145
509000
4000
08:58
and made into a very, kind of complex space.
146
513000
3000
09:01
And the idea was the relationship of the space,
147
516000
3000
09:04
which was made up of the fold of the image,
148
519000
3000
09:07
and the dialectic or the conflict between the figuration,
149
522000
5000
09:12
and the clarity of the image
150
527000
2000
09:14
and the complexity of the space, which were in dialog.
151
529000
3000
09:17
And it made us rethink the whole notion of how we work
152
532000
3000
09:20
and how we make things,
153
535000
2000
09:22
and it led us to ideas that were closer to fashion design as we flattened out surfaces,
154
537000
6000
09:28
and then brought them back together as they could make spatial combinations.
155
543000
3000
09:31
And this was the first prototype in Korea,
156
546000
3000
09:34
as we're dealing with a dynamic envelope,
157
549000
3000
09:37
and then the same characteristic of the fabric.
158
552000
3000
09:40
It has a material identity and it's translucent and it's porous,
159
555000
5000
09:45
and it allows us for a very different notion of what a skin of a building is.
160
560000
4000
09:49
And that turned right away into another project.
161
564000
2000
09:51
This is the Caltrans building in Los Angeles.
162
566000
3000
09:54
And now we're seeing as the skin and the body is differentiated.
163
569000
4000
09:58
Again, it's a very, very simple notion.
164
573000
2000
10:00
If you look at most buildings,
165
575000
2000
10:02
what you look at is the building, the facade, and it is the building.
166
577000
2000
10:04
And all of a sudden we're kind of moving away,
167
579000
2000
10:06
and we're separating the skin from the body,
168
581000
2000
10:08
and that's going to lead to broader performance criteria,
169
583000
2000
10:10
which I'm going to talk about in a minute.
170
585000
2000
10:12
And you're looking at how it drapes over
171
587000
2000
10:14
and differentiates from the body.
172
589000
2000
10:16
And then, again, the building itself,
173
591000
3000
10:19
middle of Los Angeles, right across from City Hall.
174
594000
3000
10:22
And as it moves, it takes pieces of the earth with it. It bends up.
175
597000
3000
10:25
It's part of a sign system,
176
600000
2000
10:27
which was part of the kind of legacy of Los Angeles --
177
602000
2000
10:29
the two-dimension, three-dimension signing, etc.
178
604000
3000
10:33
And then it allows one to penetrate the work itself.
179
608000
4000
10:37
It's transparent, and it allows you to understand, I think,
180
612000
4000
10:41
what is always the most interesting thing in any building,
181
616000
2000
10:43
which is the actual constructional processes that make it.
182
618000
3000
10:46
And it's probably the most intense kind of territory
183
621000
5000
10:51
of the work, which is not occupied,
184
626000
2000
10:53
because architecture is always the most interesting in some mechanism
185
628000
3000
10:56
when it's separated from function,
186
631000
2000
10:58
and this is an area that allows for that.
187
633000
2000
11:00
And then the skin starts transforming into other materials.
188
635000
3000
11:03
We're using light as a building material in this case.
189
638000
2000
11:05
We're working with Keith Sonnier in New York,
190
640000
2000
11:07
and we're making this large outside room,
191
642000
2000
11:09
which is possible in Los Angeles, and which is very much reflective
192
644000
4000
11:13
of the urban, the contemporary urban environments
193
648000
3000
11:16
that you would find in Shibuya or you'd find in Mexico City
194
651000
3000
11:19
or Sao Paulo, etc.,
195
654000
2000
11:21
that have to do with activating the city over a longer span of time.
196
656000
4000
11:25
And that was very much part of the notion
197
660000
2000
11:27
of the urban objective of this project in Los Angeles.
198
662000
3000
11:31
And, again, all of it promoting transparency.
199
666000
4000
11:35
And an image which may be closest talks about the use of light as a medium,
200
670000
7000
11:42
that light becomes literally a building material.
201
677000
3000
11:45
Well, that immediately turned into something much broader, and as a scope.
202
680000
4000
11:49
And again, we're looking at an early sketch
203
684000
4000
11:53
where I'm understanding now
204
688000
2000
11:55
that the skin can be a transition between the ground and the tower.
205
690000
3000
11:58
This is a building in San Francisco which is under construction.
206
693000
3000
12:01
And now it turned into something much, much broader as a problem,
207
696000
4000
12:05
and it has to do with performance.
208
700000
2000
12:07
This will be the first building in the United States that took --
209
702000
3000
12:10
well, I can't say it took the air conditioning out. It's a hybrid.
210
705000
2000
12:12
I wanted a pure thing, and I can't get it.
211
707000
2000
12:14
It's a wrong attitude, actually, because the hybrid is probably more interesting.
212
709000
3000
12:17
But we took the air conditioning out of the tower.
213
712000
2000
12:19
There's some air conditioning left in the base,
214
714000
2000
12:21
but the skin now moves on hydraulics.
215
716000
2000
12:23
It forces air through a Venturi force if there's no wind.
216
718000
4000
12:27
It adjusts continually. And we removed the air conditioning.
217
722000
3000
12:30
Huge, huge thing. Half a million dollars a year delta.
218
725000
4000
12:34
10 of these -- it's just under a million square feet --
219
729000
2000
12:36
800 and some thousand square feet --
220
731000
2000
12:38
10 of these would power Sausalito -- the delta on this.
221
733000
3000
12:41
And so now what we're looking at, as the projects get larger in scale,
222
736000
3000
12:44
as they interface with broader problems,
223
739000
5000
12:49
that they expand the capabilities
224
744000
3000
12:52
in terms of their performance.
225
747000
2000
12:55
Well, I could also start here.
226
750000
2000
12:57
We could talk about the relationship
227
752000
2000
12:59
at a more biological sense of the relationship of building and ground.
228
754000
4000
13:03
Well, our research -- my generation for sure,
229
758000
3000
13:06
people who were going to school in the late '60s --
230
761000
2000
13:08
made very much a shift out of the internal focus of architecture,
231
763000
6000
13:14
looking at architecture within its own territory,
232
769000
2000
13:16
and we were much more affected by film,
233
771000
2000
13:18
by what was going on in the art world, etc.
234
773000
2000
13:20
This is, of course, Michael Heizer.
235
775000
2000
13:22
And when I saw this, first an image and then visited,
236
777000
4000
13:26
it completely changed the way I thought after that point.
237
781000
4000
13:30
And I understood that building really could be
238
785000
2000
13:32
the augmentation of the Earth's surface,
239
787000
2000
13:34
and it completely shifted the notion of building ground in the most basic sense.
240
789000
5000
13:39
And then -- well, he was probably looking at this -- this is Nazca;
241
794000
3000
13:42
this is 700 years ago -- the most amazing four-kilometer land sculptures.
242
797000
7000
13:49
They're just totally incredible.
243
804000
2000
13:51
And that led us to then completely rethinking how we draw, how we work.
244
806000
4000
13:55
This is the first sketch of a high school in Pomona --
245
810000
3000
13:58
well, whatever it is, a model, a conceptual, kind of idea.
246
813000
4000
14:02
And it's the reshaping of the Earth to make it occupiable.
247
817000
4000
14:06
So it puts 200,000 square feet of stuff that make a high school work
248
821000
5000
14:11
in the surface of that Earth.
249
826000
2000
14:13
There it is modeled as it was developing into a piece of work.
250
828000
3000
14:16
And there it is, again, as it's starting to get resolved tectonically,
251
831000
4000
14:20
and then there's the school.
252
835000
2000
14:22
And, of course,
253
837000
2000
14:24
we're interested in participating with education.
254
839000
2000
14:26
I have absolutely no interest in producing a building
255
841000
2000
14:28
that just accommodates X, Y and Z function.
256
843000
2000
14:30
What I'm interested in are how these ideas
257
845000
2000
14:32
participate in the educational process of young people.
258
847000
3000
14:35
It demands some sort of notion of inquiry
259
850000
2000
14:37
because it's a system that's developed not sculpturally.
260
852000
2000
14:39
It's an idea that started from my first discussion.
261
854000
3000
14:42
It has to do with a broad, consistent logic,
262
857000
3000
14:45
and that logic could be understood as one occupies the building.
263
860000
4000
14:49
And there's an overt -- at least,
264
864000
2000
14:51
there's an attempt to make a very overt notion of a building
265
866000
3000
14:54
that connects to the land in a very different way
266
869000
2000
14:56
because I was interested in a very didactic approach to the problem,
267
871000
3000
14:59
as one would understand that.
268
874000
2000
15:01
And the second project that was just finished in Los Angeles
269
876000
2000
15:03
that uses some of the same ideas. It uses landscape as a major idea.
270
878000
4000
15:07
Then, again, we're doing the headquarters for NOAA --
271
882000
3000
15:10
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency --
272
885000
3000
15:13
outside of Washington in Maryland.
273
888000
2000
15:15
And this is how they see the world.
274
890000
2000
15:17
They have 22 satellites zipping around at plus or minus 100 miles,
275
892000
4000
15:21
and the site's in red.
276
896000
2000
15:23
And what we really want to do -- well, the architects,
277
898000
3000
15:26
if there are architects out there, this is the Laugier Hut;
278
901000
3000
15:29
this is the primitive hut that's been around for so long --
279
904000
2000
15:31
and what we wanted to do is really build this,
280
906000
2000
15:33
because they see themselves as the caretakers of the world,
281
908000
4000
15:37
and we wanted them to look down at their satellite,
282
912000
2000
15:39
how they see their own site, that eight-acre site,
283
914000
2000
15:41
and we wanted nothing left. We wanted it to stay green.
284
916000
3000
15:44
There's actually three baseball fields on it right now,
285
919000
2000
15:46
and they're going to stay there.
286
921000
1000
15:47
We put one piece directly north-south,
287
922000
2000
15:49
and it holds the dishes at the ears, right?
288
924000
3000
15:52
And then right below that the processing, and the mission lift,
289
927000
3000
15:55
and the mission control room, and all the other spaces are underground.
290
930000
4000
15:59
And what you look at is an aircraft carrier
291
934000
2000
16:01
that's performance-driven by the cone vision of these satellite dishes.
292
936000
4000
16:05
And that the building itself is occupied in the lower portion,
293
940000
4000
16:09
broken up by a series of courts,
294
944000
2000
16:11
and it's five acres of uninterrupted, horizontal space
295
946000
3000
16:14
for their administrative offices.
296
949000
3000
16:17
And then that, in turn, propelled us to look at
297
952000
3000
16:20
larger-scale projects where this notion of landscape building interface
298
955000
4000
16:24
becomes a connective tissue.
299
959000
2000
16:26
The new capital competition for Berlin, four years ago.
300
961000
6000
16:32
And again we just finished the ECB --
301
967000
2000
16:34
actually Coop Himmelblau in Vienna just won this project,
302
969000
3000
16:37
where the building was separated into a series of landscape elements
303
972000
6000
16:43
that became part of a connective tissue of a park,
304
978000
3000
16:46
which is parallel to the river, and develops ideas of the buildings themselves
305
981000
6000
16:52
and becomes part of the connective fabric --
306
987000
3000
16:55
the social, cultural and the landscape, recreational fabric of the city.
307
990000
5000
17:00
And the building is no longer seen as an autonomous thing,
308
995000
2000
17:02
but something that's only inextricably connected
309
997000
2000
17:04
to this city and this place at this time.
310
999000
2000
17:06
And a project that was realized in Austria, the Hooper Bank,
311
1001000
4000
17:10
which again used this idea of connecting typology,
312
1005000
3000
17:13
the traditional buildings, and morphology,
313
1008000
3000
17:16
or the relationship of the development of land as an idea,
314
1011000
3000
17:19
into a complex, which is a piece of a city where we can see part of it
315
1014000
4000
17:23
is literally just this augmenting,
316
1018000
2000
17:25
this movement of the land that's a very simple idea of
317
1020000
3000
17:28
just lifting it up and occupying it,
318
1023000
1000
17:29
and other parts are much more energetic and intense.
319
1024000
3000
17:32
And talk about that intensity
320
1027000
2000
17:34
in terms of the collisions of the kind of events they make
321
1029000
4000
17:38
that have to do with putting a series of systems together,
322
1033000
2000
17:40
and then where part of it is in the ground, part of it is oppositional lifts.
323
1035000
4000
17:44
One enters the building as it lifts off the ground,
324
1039000
3000
17:47
and it becomes part of the idea.
325
1042000
2000
17:49
And then the skin -- the edges of this --
326
1044000
3000
17:52
all promote the dynamic, the movement of the building
327
1047000
3000
17:55
as a series of seismic shifts, geologic shifts. Right?
328
1050000
5000
18:00
And it makes for event space and then it breaks in places
329
1055000
4000
18:04
that allow you to peer into the interior, and those interiors, again,
330
1059000
3000
18:07
are promoting transparency for the workplace,
331
1062000
2000
18:09
which has been a continual interest of ours.
332
1064000
3000
18:14
And then, again, in a more, kind of traditional setting,
333
1069000
3000
18:17
this is a graduate student housing in Toronto,
334
1072000
2000
18:19
and it's very much about the relationship of a building
335
1074000
4000
18:23
as it makes a connective tissue to the city.
336
1078000
2000
18:25
The main idea was the gateway, where it breaks the site,
337
1080000
3000
18:28
and the building occupies both the public space and the private space.
338
1083000
4000
18:32
And it's that territory of -- it's this thing.
339
1087000
4000
18:36
I visited the site many times, and everybody, kind of --
340
1091000
3000
18:39
you can see this from two kilometers away; it's an exact center of the street,
341
1094000
4000
18:43
and the whole notion is to engage the public,
342
1098000
2000
18:45
to engage buildings as part of the public tissue of the city.
343
1100000
5000
18:51
And finally, one of the most interesting projects -- it's a courthouse.
344
1106000
4000
18:55
And what I want to talk about -- this is the Supreme Court, of course --
345
1110000
3000
18:58
and, well, I'm dealing with Michael Hogan, the Chief Justice of Oregon.
346
1113000
4000
19:02
You could not proceed without making this negotiation
347
1117000
4000
19:06
between one's own values and the relationship
348
1121000
4000
19:10
of the character you're working with and how he understands the court,
349
1125000
4000
19:14
because I'm showing him, of course, Corbusier at Savoy,
350
1129000
3000
19:17
which is 1928, which is the beginning of modern architecture.
351
1132000
3000
19:20
Well, then we get to this image.
352
1135000
3000
19:23
And this is where the project started. Because I'm going,
353
1138000
4000
19:27
I'm interested in the phenomenon that's taking place in here.
354
1142000
5000
19:32
And really what we're talking about is constructing reality.
355
1147000
4000
19:36
And I'm a character that's extremely interested
356
1151000
2000
19:38
in understanding the nature of that constructed reality
357
1153000
3000
19:41
because there's no such thing as nature any more. Nature is gone.
358
1156000
4000
19:45
Nature in the 19th-century sense, alright?
359
1160000
2000
19:47
Nature is only a cultural edifice today, right?
360
1162000
3000
19:50
We construct it and we construct those ideas.
361
1165000
3000
19:53
And then of course, this one, our governor at the moment.
362
1168000
3000
19:56
And we spent some time with Conan, believe it or not,
363
1171000
5000
20:01
and then that led us to, kind of, the very differences of our worlds
364
1176000
4000
20:05
from a legal and an artistic, architectural.
365
1180000
2000
20:07
And it forced us to talk about notions of how we work,
366
1182000
4000
20:11
and the dynamics of that, and what other sources of the work is.
367
1186000
3000
20:14
And it led us to the project, the courthouse,
368
1189000
3000
20:17
which is absolutely a part of a negotiation
369
1192000
3000
20:20
between tradition and pieces of the traditional courthouse.
370
1195000
3000
20:23
You'll find a stair that's the same length as the Supreme Court.
371
1198000
2000
20:25
Here's a piano nobile, which is a device used in the Renaissance.
372
1200000
3000
20:28
The courts were made of that. The skin is this series of layers
373
1203000
4000
20:32
that reflect even rusticated stonework,
374
1207000
3000
20:35
but which were embedded with fragments of the Constitution,
375
1210000
4000
20:39
which were part of the little process,
376
1214000
2000
20:41
all set on a plinth that defined it from the community.
377
1216000
2000
20:43
Thank you so much.
378
1218000
2000
20:45
(Applause)
379
1220000
3000

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Thom Mayne - Architect
Founder of the influential studio Morphosis, and co-founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne marries conceptual ideas with form, challenging the way we perceive structure, building and the environment.

Why you should listen

Widely regarded as one of the world's most provocative architects, Thom Mayne is only interested in exploring the new, the present and the now. For him, architecture is not a matter of producing a readily imaginable building, but is instead a starting point for a larger discussion. The output of his Santa Monica-based studio, Morphosis, shows the results of the negotiations between concept and reality.

As Mayne describes things, the only constant in his professional career has been people telling him something can't be done. But he and his studio continue to produce astonishing work for clients worldwide, including government offices, hospitals, restaurants, residences and schools. Redefining how buildings work both within themselves and within their environment, Mayne and Morphosis are forging dramatic new landscapes for a startlingly modern world.

He joined President Obama's initiative Turnaround: Arts, which uses art education as a tool for success in struggling schools. 

More profile about the speaker
Thom Mayne | Speaker | TED.com