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Inspiring minds through nature and science. Come and explore. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Museum Expansion Project
Quotes from Thom Mayne
“Architecture is a way of seeing, thinking and questioning our world and our place in it. It requires a natural inquisitiveness, openness in our observations, and a will to act in affirmation…
I’m chasing an architecture that engages and demands inquiry. Architecture is not passive, not decorative.
It is essential… it affects us directly and profoundly – it has the potential to impact behavior and the quality of everyday life.”
THOM MAYNE
PRITZKER PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
MAY 31, 2005
“Education is the social glue of our diverse society.
I believe that architecture can engage deeply in the act of education both by providing an environment that engenders freedom of thought, creativity, and curiosity, and as a subject of study in its own right.
Inspiring inquiry is at the heart of our responsibility in educating our young people, and architecture has the enormous potential to encourage inquiry and provoke curiosity. As architects, we must address the pragmatic territories at the highest level; but if we fail to capture the virtual territory—that is the territory of the mind of the student—then we risk constructing another mediocre building that will not spark the creativity, imagination, and optimism that are the birthright of our young citizens.”
THOM MAYNE, MARCH 2007
About the San Francisco Federal Building:
“When architecture engages social, cultural, political, and ethical currents, it has the potential to transform the way we see the world and our place in it.
It is from this intersection of broad societal currents that we approached the design for the new Federal Building in San Francisco. Our primary interest was to produce a performance-driven building that would fundamentally transform its urban surroundings, the nature of the workplace, and the experiences of the people who use it while making intelligent use of natural resources. For me, this project represents the epitome of an optimistic architecture; an architecture that synthesizes its complex forces and realities into a coherent whole.”
THOM MAYNE