Thom Mayne

“I don't make beautiful buildings. I make buildings that are interesting.”

“Architecture is a discipline that takes time and patience. If you're in it for the quick fix, you're in the wrong profession.”

“I'm interested in the messy, the unfinished, the conflicted, the contradictory.”

“My interest in making form is not in the picturesque, it's not in the theatrical, it's in the intellectual.”

“For me, the client is not the initiator of the project. I'm the initiator. The client is a participant. I'm a professional, I'm an artist.”

“The computer is an extension of the mind. It is a tool for thinking.”

“Drawings are not end products. They are a process.”

“Architecture is not about building the impossible, which would be naive. It is about building the possible in an impossible situation.”

“I'm interested in producing a work that has a certain ambiguity, that can be read in different ways.”

“If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.”

“You have to be a bit of a masochist to be an architect.”

“The city is a space of conflict.”

“Architecture is a social act and the material theater of human activity.”

“I believe that architecture is a form of cultural production.”

“To be an architect you have to be a person of faith.”