www.quondam.com/39/3826.htm

Thom Mayne on Charlie Rose
2005.12.05 16:00

First of all, presenting a sound-bite answer is not the issue here, especially since Rose gave Mayne a whole hour. Rose's question contained some leads, "is it politics?, is it style?" (I don't remember all the exact words), and given the question, I would have given the context of where I see Morphosis within architectural history, and then explained what the Morphosis design approach sets out to accomplish. I can't answer what Mayne would say himself, but that's the way I would have approached an answer to the question. What I thought after I saw Mayne's hesitation and then heard his answer is just how afraid and subsequently unable architects are at talking about style. But, more to the point, architects are afraid to discuss their motivation because a lot of the motivation (especially for Morphosis) is about creating a certain style.

style 1 : the way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed

The notion of style in architecture has been so debased by Modernism's reaction to eclecticism that architects now don't even know how to talk about it.

Kahn had a (unique?) way of speaking about the investigation of architecture's program and how designed space then strives to match the needs of the program, which made talking about style something secondary.

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