Thom Mayne Interview: I Wanted to Produce Something Off

In 2009 a spaceship landed in the middle of old New York. At 41 Cooper Square, Thom Mayne's iconic building shines like a diamond in the rough, transparent, light, and extremely cool.
As an architect, Thom Mayne ( b.1944) is fascinated with imperfection, he says: "I have a preference for rough architecture, real, inexpensive, unfinished." Initially the local community was sceptical of the new project in the middle of their neighbourhood, objecting by posting notes such as: "Please take this spaceship to another site." But after a while most people seem to have embraced the newcomer, accepted it as one of their own. Architecture is not meant to be a popularity contest though, as Mayne puts it: "We've failed if the response is that it's OK, if it seems neutral. Everybody can't like it."
Thom Mayne received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in March 2005. Mayne graduated from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1978, and has since held teaching positions at various renowned Universities. Mayne is principal of Morphosis, an architectural firm in Santa Monica, California. In this interview Mayne talks of the Cooper building, but also more generally about architecture: "Architecture is a result of a process of asking questions, and testing them, and re-interrogating, and changing in a repetitive way." To Thom Mayne architecture is "a way of thinking and exploring, inventing, and making and participating in the world" , he says.
'The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art' is a privately funded college located in Cooper Square in the East Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, New York City. Cooper Union was established in 1859 on a radical new model of American higher education based on founder Peter Cooper's fundamental belief that the best education should be "free and open to all" who qualify, regardless of race, religion, social status. The building at 41 Cooper Square was built as a new classroom, laboratory, and studio facility, designed by Thom Mayne with associate architect Gruzen Samton. In contrast to the Foundation Building, it is a modern, environmentally "green" design, housing nine above-ground floors and two basements.
Thom Mayne was interviewed by Jesper Bundgaard
Photography and editing by Per Henriksen
Produced by Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, produced by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014.
Supported by Nordea-fonden.

[@TijaniAbosede]

remarkably awesome.. intrigued by his vision. Truly inspiring

[@matthiasmacandrew5851]

Buildings are definitely ART FIRST which can be a problem if you sit near the top floor of a 28 story building in California with no AC...

[@Constantinesis]

Brilliant works and such a complex architecture !

[@fatimaalnajjar3444]

I love this genius

[@obinnanwosu1643]

Thom Mayne is a legend

[@johnnylee8194]

Smug competitive applied art major

[@oliwiax8312]

Nie polecam

[@oliwiax8312]

Nudne

[@johnnylee8194]

Its applied art ya ding dongs. There are no theories since nothing is provable but only ideas. Only pretend man made (screwed up as much as man is capable of) complexity since art does not need to make sense

[@angelnegron6798]

What a waste of perfectly good space.

[@javierpacheco8234]

Agreed and the building is hideous

[@sheldondrake8935]

I hear everyone who works there hates it. but other architects admire it, so who cares if it is of no practical use whatsoever. You pretentious shits destroyed tuition-free for THIS? Cooper Union absolutely saved my life; now people like who I was aren't going to have that chance, and that is stupid.

[@riccia888]

He is talking non sense at all. its like a gimmick.

[@johnnylee8194]

When a person is required to takes only humanities classes in college (architecture degree in US is all combination english, history& art classes in college to graduate. Highschool kid heading to JC takes more STEM classes) and pontificates as much as Nobel Prize winner, how do you respond to that? Delusional.

[@johnnylee8194]

Many confused people throw around false equivalency by comparing Pritzker prize to Nobel prize. Pritzker prize is just a vanity project and is a branding effort for wealthy Pritzker family name. Moreover, the prize committee is composed of mostly random buffoons who have no knowledge of building design and hence the prizes has no credibility. Its akin to trash collector in Nobel award selection committee making award for physics. Architecture is applied art degree period. Almost all top tier us college or university do not offer this degree for a reason. Harvard graduate design school has lot of people from second, third rate undergraduate schools because most kid smart enough to get into top tier undergrad schools are too intelligent to spend more time and money on this cheesy degree.