Photographs: Arkitera Architecture Center
GŞ: My first question is about the context of your projects. There are some keywords on your website. You do not think that architecture can be explained by words; it isn’t a verbal thing today. However you are using the words of “contradiction”, “conflict”, “open-ended” and “intuitive” for your projects. I would like to ask the meaning of these words to you?
TM: Architecture is a cultural fact. For me the notions of contradiction or conflict are different represents the status of where we are in society today.
GŞ: Do you think that architecture is not a verbal issue?
TM: Verbal? No, of course not. Architecture questions itself within its own terms and then we use these words to abandon, to help, to place, to situate it and the notion of the resolution for dealing with the mutual information. This is essential for me to perceive how we live today within apolic one with this kind of a mense progenious world. We are made more and more aware and that reflects the reality of our world with all of its complexities, nuances and specificities, versus simpler and singular ideas that place it in a generation conic. But also it is a part of my working method which represents my generative material. There is a constant renewal of sources available to me. As, I am looking for my next work, it allows me to develop a specific work which stands versus following some singular vocabulary of some unifying principle. None of which I mean is different. It is not just like making a language. It is a language of Morphosis. There are some singular ideas which are highly differentiating projects and making them unique and specific to the particular terms of which they try them in all race, program and occasion. And, it seems like the work speaks of that finally. People understand it; this is the actual thing which you have to question. When people look at it, they can see. It is evident; the tensions that are still left in the work. Also just I have leaving the process of describing the activity of thinking and inventing architecture, leaving traces around that are legible in the build works.
GŞ: I had an interview with Daniel Libeskind. He said that the language of architecture consists of materials and also the light. Do you agree with it?
TM: Materials…The language of architecture starts with ideas, contexts, constructs and inventions. No, it does not start with materials at all. Materials are at the service of ideas. It starts with inventions, constructions, conceptualizations. However materials are about ideas. And they reflect values of interference, in terms of what you are tempting to make architecture to speak about. Materials’ relation with the idea is true, although it is an old-fashioned thought. Materials have to do the reflection of supporting some ideas and supporting it with conceptual terms, within poetic and artistic terms. And they come later.
Materials are seen around in the environment, in the conditions of light. I would say light is also only a part of it. It is like the atmosphere of the world. The ideas are now implicit and embedded in the work. The work has to communicate with those ideas. Those ideas are given relevance by the nature of materiality of the substance.
GŞ: Actually we supposed to be three people in this interview but unfortunately Şevin Yıldız could not participate, but I will ask her questions too. This is one of them: Last night, on your lecture you had been asked about your essence of concept of conflict and connectivity and the way that you integrated with two words and use each other. I think you said “conflict of connectivity”. How do you integrate these two concepts with each other? Would you give an example from your works?
TM: I think, I said “isolated connection”. Our work, as all our forms like literature, deals with realities of everyday life. And those realities include awareness of life which you are not aligned. In some cases they might be in conflict with each other. The work can be both private and connected. It can be either personal or private to me and it can be part of a connected world. And it can deal with various tensions. It may have to do with global or local, it can have to do the sentence between functionalities and the urban purposes that have to do with the relationship between like the multiple reading with various people.
Today, there is no single audience in the world. The audiences are multiple based on the nature of your culture. If your culture whether it is by your nationality or education or by your culture of your own psychological placement, reading architecture is something that you shan’t talk about the artistic activity as the first half of the world. Second half is the viewer, the user and which make of the complete structure of the world itself. But, everywhere in the world, you find an interest in the nature of the tensions and in the differences which make up our societies today.
In USA, I live in a multi-cultural city with 134 different languages, and I somehow adapted. And, I myself as a person, I am a mixture. I come from so many different places.
GŞ: Your family is from Los Angeles, or..?
TM: Before that, Copenhagen, England, France and Germany…
GŞ: Ah, so you’re a mixture…
TM: Yes. This is a fantastic city that way because it is an enormous part of the plane. The North, the West, the East, it is in the middle of where you go. It represents the connection between cultures of 2000 years.
GŞ: Actually, there is a question about Los Angeles. It is always said that Los Angeles is a very important factor for “Morphosis” and for you. Because, if “Morphosis” was in another city and you were in another city, it wouldn’t be “Morphosis” and you wouldn’t be Thom Mayne. What would be the difference between being and working in L.A than other cities?
TM: In all of the portions of people, who work as architects, some of them are conscious and some of them are not conscious. First of all, I think today architects must work in a global context.
GŞ: Frank Gehry said that if you were in another city, for instance New York, you wouldn’t be Thom Mayne.
TM: And not Morphosis?
GŞ: No?
TM: No, I do not agree with that. Morphosis is an idea about collective practice. And, it is a challenging, a singular artistic signature and working within collective means. That represents my working method. I guess I am the director of a crew who cope to work.
I think clearly working in L.A. has an influence for my career because it is a very open cultured city; it does not have a dominant cultural idea. It has a huge mixture of cultures. It has a wealthy climate which allows you to do certain things because of the ease of this climate. And there is an extremely interesting community of architects and also the academic world as well as the practice world in my generation, which is allowing me to collaborate and have very high levels of discussions. All those have been extremely important for my development. L.A. is a fantastic ground for nurturing an architect. In addition to that it has excellent schools which bring in people from all over the world. By the way it has a population which does not have a single way when it comes to style.
The definition of architecture is very open to exploration; I think practicing in the city is essential for many people, certainly for my generation. I practiced as a young man, started my career in Japan, afterwards in Austria, I am going to Venice now. I have a building which is almost finished and I will work again in there. We have done competitions in Germany, on and on. If you look at my work I have been practicing globally, since I was a young man. In fact very few of them are in L.A. Therefore in our practice, we do not even think about L.A. architecture is where it takes us. Some of the people are asking now; “if you were in Istanbul would you do buildings like Istanbul?” No, of course I would not.
By the way, are there any modern buildings in Istanbul? I went to a business center. I saw very bad modern buildings, they were horrible. And I ask the question back: Tell me, what is a modern building in Istanbul? Does anybody know? Of course they do not. There is no modern building in Istanbul. There is a long history. We make our history. But that history is informed much more by the context that we approach architecture, which is again a mental phase of how we develop ideas. I think today this structure is clearly global beyond from now on.
How long have you been out of school?
GŞ: I went to school of architecture in 1997 and I graduated in 2003.
TM: I assume you have met similar people which my students follow because they are similar people for all over the world. You are consumed with architects from Turkey. You know who Zaha Hadid is; you know who Rem Koolhaas is. Today, people are informed by journals which are global and mass media. A lot of the philosophy or the idea is the work itself. I can be in Bangkok, I can be in Sao Paulo, I can be in Mexico City and people would look at me in the same way. It is the nature and the power which architecture operates today.
It is not very different than the history of this city and its influences by various cultures… It is a part of the history of all cultures, you can see it if you trace the relationships of China, of the Roman period or Constantine, where you want to go. You can find influences in this city. In fact, I would have thought, it is already ideal and global, connected to the Roman Empire, connected to China and connected to re-boundaries which this place represents. Meaning that, from the beginning it is already being highly influenced by these strike horses, now the horses are more or less uniform.
On another note, there are a lot of students in Istanbul or Turkey. I asked somebody yesterday, are there quiet a bit Beaux-Arts school that teach Beaux-Arts which is classical? In America, there are still schools like that…
GŞ: For instance we have Mimar Sinan University here, which is not exactly a school of Beaux-Arts, but respectful to the traditions of it, however it is also a modern educational institution.
For years of working as an urban planner can you tell us its contributions to your current works?
TM: Architecture, for me can only be seen as a part of city making, and part of a larger context. So, architecture is part of a creational process and city making which go at the same time. And I also think what is taken place in the last ten years or last decade seems to be increased number of very large-scale projects…
GŞ: As far as I know, you have four projects now, am I right?
TM: Urban, yes. We are doing a large project in New York… And at this scaled projects, you have a lot to do with increased economical aggregations. They are getting larger, so the developments are getting larger and larger.
Yesterday in my lecture I also mentioned that; structure-connected, in terms of methodology, organizational strategy takes a deal of more and more complex work. And, it seems that architecture is limited in their capability of dealing with complicated problems. Like sciences, system analysis, there are disciplines which you can analyze. By the way they are more quick dealing with large interrogative, complex problems which have multiple various disciplines. So you are dealing with problems that are economic, cultural, social, political or infra-structural. We need more sophisticated methods to understand how to deal with these complexities and especially what to do with the interrogative nature. We determine these problems and more specific formal mechanisms to organize larger components of the city. It is always discussing, developing ideas of subsystems that produce larger organizations and working on ideas which have to do with an organizational system that has the capability of servicing us to accommodate these larger problems. And it seems that there are many little researches on this kind of problems. Not many architects investigate these kinds of problems. I can not name too many people who interest in larger scaled urban design. When you think of the 80’s, people died somewhere at the beginning of 90’s, urban design as a discipline starts at this point, that these real arising problems again have to do with the increase scale..
GŞ: In context of your projects, how do you compare 80’s and 90’s? How do you compare these two eras?
TM: I do not see my work like that. My work is continuous. It follows an evolution.
The shift probably in 90’s had to do a scale and I got my first larger projects with the school and dormitory in Hooperbank. It was the beginning of my career as an architect. And then right after the projects that I do now; 67 project parts. Now we are starting next group, but more or less continual evolution of ideas… I think the biggest difference which we can talk about before is; as a young architect with a smaller scale, a lot of your ideas are implicit, and as the work gets larger it gets more explicit. And so you can work with some of the smaller houses which I would have say that already implicated urban ideas that are much more implicit in their indication of their small parts. You perceive that in large projects ideas are explicit. If you trace them back to the smaller parts, you would see the traces of the same ideas, but they are not able to communicate because they are implied. They are implied versus the real, it is related to the limited nature of the project.
GŞ: At this point I have a question. You are very interested in the context of “evolution”. It can be understand from your firm’s name “Morphosis”. It means change in form. I would like to ask what factors are effective on the evolution of your works?
TM: What are the disciplines?
GŞ: Yes.
TM: Biology, I would at least name biology. Any number of ideas I mean to do with the origins. I am going to compare the DNA structure with my work and the nature. The structure of my work starts from simple systems which combine to make more complex systems. The gap may be hallowing the biology today. In the lecture, I wished to talk a little bit about that. It does not really matter where it starts. There is no meaning in the beginning of the work; it comes out of the process itself. I can start with this and this and put them together. It starts with some initiating act, which in many cases somehow instinctively connects to some part of the project which you sense. But, it is out of the process and repeating the process; you make something, you challenge it, you rehearse it, you interrogate it, you change it or you do it again, that keeps on. Understanding these interrogations and the work which is the direct result of the processes, would form it. And this is a totally natural process. The work is the result of these operations.
I do not decide how the work will look like at the end. I have no idea how it looks like, nothing at all. Questions come out of the nature of the method which develops it, and that nature is collecting…
GŞ: So, are you changing tools?
TM: Yes, absolutely. Things which I can not even pre-imagine, things that can only come out of a…
GŞ: We can say that you are a part of the evolution of your projects.
TM: I do not have the same control of it. I have the control of the method but not the product. I have no priority. And, there would be no way that I could imagine. It comes out of the system of thinking. And if you change it, the process is how we renounce the idea and the method is somehow unique to architecture.
Architecture is a very specific way of seeing and investigating. It’s process is quiet specific to architecture itself. It is unique to the discipline which differentiates to the architect. In my opinion architecture becomes less and less self-differential. Today the classic arts, cinema, literature all influences the ideas and effect the nature of the work.
GŞ: But, all of them have their unique way and they integrate together. I mean all of the art branches influence each other. They are all unique but how do they integrate with each other?
TM: As an architect you discriminate or select certain things which are interesting to you. For instance I am discriminating and choosing certain things which are useful or influential to me. I am sure every architect has…
GŞ: And, you also mentioned last night; your work with Rebecca Mendes?
TM: I am collaborating with many people, for example; my work with Twee Sionee at New York or the graphic artist Rebecca Mendes at UCLA, I did not even talk about the woman in San Francisco named Jane Tuel and also Bouche on the inside, and so on…
I really enjoy collaborating with the artists as a part of the work. And, which is all part of a public nature of the work, the council is public art private. We are really interested in educating this. For instance the conference building; the light, the walls, and the building, you can not separate the art and architecture. They are completely connected in an idea.
GŞ: You are mentioning that your method resemble at Elias Canetti’s dog sticking its nose into everything, insatiably turning over the world, because it wants to do it to be able to do it again and again. It seems to me that this depiction is about neither finding a solution nor grappling with the problems and questions. It seems to me that you like to ask questions, produce questions even if there are not any…"
TM: The basis of the method is to ask questions with certain insistence and curiosity and keep producing challenging questions. You must continually ask questions and discuss so many…
GŞ: People think that you have questions, but you like to produce questions also…
TM: In today’s world you have questions about everything; I can not even imagine the basis of all of our work without questioning. The degrees of the questions we ask are literally the basis of the work. You literally locate the problem, what is the specific problem? Architect is a person who works to find differentiating possibilities for particular problems which they are given; these problems can be functional, environmental, technical or urban etc... And, actually there are no certain answers today. We are living in a rapid changing world and therefore the terms which we work on, are continually changing too. It starts with asking very fundamental questions. And it has to start with education. You educate young people; you give them certain tools and you promote inquisitiveness allowing them to understand that there are not any fixed solutions, but there are methods of interrogation and questioning.
There are processes which have pregnancies and possibilities which lead to something because they are not juristic; they are not questions which bring in new questions but they are questions that lead you to some sort of focus which allows you to synthesize something. You come to some conclusion of what a building is. It is finally, fined and fixed material and all of that. It does not start with a prescribed program or a prescribed formal idea or a language.
There is not a single language today. It starts from an agenda of issues. And it has located values, like what is architecture, what does it mean, what does it do, how does it enhance, what is why, how to solve a problem and it is always asking the notions of what those predictions are.
GŞ: I have one more question; in your works, it is said that you are expressing “the anomie of contemporary life”. In this sense, I would like to ask you two questions: First of all, is it just an expression of anomie which is reflected on facade or are your buildings anomics? For example Caltrans District or Hypo Alpe-Adria Centre, let’s handle Alpe-Adria; it looks so powerful, so fascinating but it feels like isolated from its surroundings, it looks like dominate its own territory and it is not interested in its neighborhoods and saying that “Hey I am here with my all power and beauty, however in fact I am lonely!”
TM: Because the radicalism difference from everything else; I guess you understand this very differently. I made it just in its potential and with the possibilities which are in architecture by its nature. It is quiet different that this status quo because I sense that not too much city lives up to it’s potential so there is going to be too much large differentials. Personally sometimes, I keep myself outside of the norm too.
I see Alpe-Adria as a model, a potential, but not a lonely example. The difference between what it is and normally architecture works is that the gap between potential and everyday life which is huge. And, I am aware of that just because of my life, who I am and where I live. I think today there are more and more young architects and they are building much more…They have realized the possibilities. If you look around, you see more and more works which are contemporary and that reflects modern abilities. And, for instance in Petunia, where I have been traveling for six years, the community strangely enough embraces the city. It is a small town, a contributive town, a medieval town, and they embrace it for some reason. The town itself likes to build. They find it like a spaceship in the middle of the city. I mentioned this last night. I am not sure if it is valuable that you like it or do not like it, it is just how it works on you.
What is happening in architecture today, it does not look like a part of the tradition of the city. The city comes out of the 1700’s, 300 years ago; we had very different ideas about the context of architecture. I mean look at your selves, there is going to be this huge gap between the tradition of a mosque and how we build structures today. This is natural. We think differently, we have discrete modes of operations; we work with computers and different materials... You have to consider the materials or the technology which we use today, as an example 200 years ago it would be impossible to build the Stalin Building…
Does not architecture follow contemporary eras and is it different than man made objects? There are methods and means as well as the intellectual, conceptual framework, relevant work time, otherwise as an architect what would you do? You would have nothing to do; you would just copy from some other generations. It is meaningless and fake. You can not rebuild history because; a piece of history which is authentic is completely connected to its time. And, it is connected to the economic structure, to the cultural, political and social structure. It is impossible to look at Hagia Sophia or the Pantheon without considering their cultural or political contexts. And, those contexts do not exist today. Therefore, you build some fake conditions and if you build it, there will be none of the qualities of the original version.
We were in Topkapı Palace yesterday, we were talking about various structures and we were discussing; when there is a building out of stone, then you forget that the buildings have odour, you have to do with the sense of touch and that you can sense the atmosphere in away which can do modern architecture, and it is more quiet and visual. So, as modern architects we think visually and graphically. And, you do not think of the senses. Therefore, when you begin to do this building, you are maybe even more aware of the sense and the atmosphere and the smell of this space. Then your art is visual. You catch the feeling. And, if you copy it you get nothing, you just get a visual index of something which is no longer the real thing anymore, but just a distant copy.
And the question is, does the copy worth anything? I am going to say no, it worths nothing. It is an absolute meaningless pastiche. It is just something that distorts history which merely reminds the real beauty of the thing itself. However the unique and distinct qualities of the original versions can not be replaced or achieved.
For instance you can look at beautiful cast iron bridges or resembling engineering projects of cast iron, and the quality of cast iron. How it is cast, how it is shaped, you can not make those things, you exhibit them, you keep them, and you admire them. And you keep those things precisely because they’re beautiful. They’re nineteenth century mechanical devices. But now you make very thin slick tables with minimum materials, but they are much more functional, high strength steels in tension which have huge capabilities. And the day will come that they will become monuments, 200 years from now, as coming out of the trains of them, and after of them something else will come.
No, no, no, people do not have a choice really. I do not see any options. But, you build authentically. There is no possibility other than using essences and qualities of architecture which become a part of the continuity. So we can look at the nature of space, spatial relationships, we can look at layers, look at abstractions, look at qualities of light, they are still available to us. As an example you can look at Pantheon, absolutely fine abstractions of that. There is a long answer to your question.
GŞ: Do you think that architecture can be consumable?
TM: I guess it is possible. It seems like; the bigger issue is the gap of modern architecture, there is a huge gap in terms of explication to the public in modern architecture, and it is your ability to consume and use it. Water sense of consuming, it is neutralizable for you; it is accessible for you to consume it. Consumed, it has to be. I seem to rely on your curiosity or your culture, whether you are a part of a broader cultural activity, which is what you are doing, because you communicate with people and what you do is to participate in the charming information. And you place within words; the notions of what architecture is or is not, or what the ideas are, what the terms are, everything which we are talking now. So you are the key as the person of conversation, because you are the translator. Because we seem to limit the time with discrepancies between various populations, in terms of how they consume and understand architecture. The separation seems to be a kind of a classic city that we are all cosmopolitan credentials, and then it seems like modern architecture is a critical activity.
Architecture is an instructive and a conceptual activity, whatever you want to call… Than it has a status more into the city, a cosmopolitan like. It is a cultural practice. And so it becomes a part of the culture. No difference than theatre, dance, sirtaki music, classical music which some from all pf our cultures. And, I think architecture is the same. Today we live in an ever increasing democratic culture which seems to promote small city culture and which is not maybe a part of architecture that we are talking about. Did you ask originally whether it is consumable? That consumption has to do with its availability. I am asking another question to your question.
GŞ: I actually asked the question in terms of self-destruction.
TM: I do not see like that at all. I am a creator not a distorter. I do not see in any way of eluding to that you’re asking a question that there must be a double reading. I see it evolving and literally it is frozen in its state of evolution. And you see it destroying somehow reverse. This is destroying itself. Especially when you are looking at one image, what makes you read, because it is literally coming out of the ground, moving out of the ground. I see that I am freezing it in a state of evolution. And, it is literally pulling out of the ground, growing, moving to the sky intentionally, purposely. And, literally it is a state of the common and, I can not even see it in destructive terms. I have no capability to do it at all. You see it in the state of destruction and I can only see it in the state of becoming and evolving. You know what is interesting; when you are producing work which is outside of normative behavior, you are producing a work that is different, that people have to contradict with it. I think, unlike a lot of the arts, architecture has durability. It is going to be there for some time.
One of the really interesting examples was Pompidou, the museum in Paris. People just hated it. I was a young guy in school, and I was going every summer to France, working on it. I spent four summers watching it on the ground. Of course in the end they were so strong they stopped the construction for six months, later they started again. And, a year later, they looked at the construction; it was incredibly ugly, with all of that technology. It was unfinished, totally unfinished. The inside out building, the mechanical system was moving out. Therefore they were writing one article after the other. One year after when people got used to it, they began to understand it and it became the symbol of Paris. It was very interesting. I worked for Eiffel Tower too, just about word to word, a hundred years ago, they talked about Gustave Eiffel. He built this cast iron in the city, it was not architecture; it was not a bridge, this full looking thing, ruining Paris, in 1889. But hundred years later it became the symbol of Paris.
When I look at the Pompidou, I see a nineteenth century building. And they rebuild the Eiffel Tower, it is about the aspiration of technology, it is about the idea. And today, it becomes the new symbol of Paris, and they are advertising it like Mc Donald’s. It is the most visited building in all over the France. Then people use it, they go up the escalator, they get to the top of the city, they get a café, they get a view, on and on. And, every once in a while they come to the museum itself, there is a supermarket, it is made for a small city culture, to expand the idea of museum. That it is an anti-museum in a way, such a classic idea. So, if we look at this work I have no idea. It has to work on your time.
It is not expected that you look at it and say “I liked the building”, but then you do, you like it or don’t like it. Maybe in a year or two years, you will have a very different feeling. And, I think in the end, the architect’s obligation is to follow his own instincts to produce something which you are convinced as a sensual authority. It is like politicians going different poles, if you have sense, if you have any strength, if you have any integrity, if you in fact have the kind of instincts that are required to be an architect; you have to take those responsibilities. You do not go out and ask people if they like it, of course not. Why would they want to like it? Exactly the same problem in place political like today, you have people that have no responsibility for making decisions and they go out and ask “yes” or “no” to the public. You are a professional, you can not do this.
By the way you can not understand a building just with its photographs without seeing it. It is not possible. Because when you walk inside, you are going to see that everything connects, so I will show you these images, they are all separate, massive; every piece connects to every other piece. So when you are inside the building there is just one shape, when you come out of the building take one piece out and then you can begin to understand the space; you can see the space which is generating the whole shape of the roof, which is going to go for two hundred meters. And, you will realize when the building lifts over the ground that is where you enter. And, I think you are going to find things that makes totally sense to you and it reveals itself as it is used. And it has to. That is the duty of the architect. It is my obligation. And, if it does not reveal itself than I get a problem if nobody finds it useful. But, I think it has to take place over time and has to take place over experience.
And, photographs are horrible. However when you view it is also interesting too. Usually to see the photographs first is like reading a review of a film before you watch. Therefore you do not want to read the review, you get screwed up because when you red two or three people it becomes impossible for you to see the film fresh. You can not erase those things. It is not possible to put the review a side, you see the film and then read the review. It is similar for architecture too, you see the photograph and automatically there is this discrepancy, you would see that much better in the photograph or much worse. Sometimes, you see the photograph; it is beautiful, then you see the work and might find it horrible, terrible. I do not name the buildings but there are pretty good architects, that use extremely well photographs and they are extremely photogenic over a mile, a hundred yards, whatever. However when you see them, it is absolutely horrible or vice versa.
ÖK: And when you look at architectural photography, they see the buildings as objects without any human being without any life just as a sculpture.
TM: That is right. I am a very conventional architect. I am not interested in 3D imagery, I just pay attention in experience and movement. I am keen on how you experience the building while moving through it. For example yesterday in Topkapı Palace, my sense of moving through the chambers and the harem is very much about the secrets of those spaces; that’s where I am looking, at that’s where I am taking it in my own brain. Because I am interested in the relationships; how one experiences architecture; its series, secrets and movements...
It is very un-modern, because today people only understand architecture from photographs. I do a piece of work and I do not know how many people, millions of people see the photograph, a couple of hundred people, a couple of thousand people actually see the building. Today in the modern world again connected to how we understand modern architecture, people know architecture much more by images than the reality. It would not be surprising if more and more people loose interest in reality and move to a pictorial reality.
GŞ: I am asking one of Şevin’s questions again; Southern California Institution of Architecture was founded as A critic towards profession that has been practiced by Cooper Union, AA London. Why? What was the main critic about it?
TM: Are you asking the connection between Cooper Union, AA London and the beginning of CIArc? If you are; I can say that when we started CIArch, there were some kind of huge parallels, with schools which were institutes, which were just academies of architecture; they were not connected with the universities and so highly specialized and there were quick defoliations between schools which were formed by CIArch in terms of high education facility. It was very much parallel to what’s taking place in Cooper Union.
I think it was actually a sharing of values of faculty; there was a connection between actual teachers, architects and between lots of institutions over the years. However they share an ambition for experiment, for investigation, which was the real connection that all of them are schools which promote investigation and research and looking for more radical and progressive forms of architecture. None of them kind of link to status quo ideas either educationally or architecturally, and all looking for or investigating new methodologies and new types of architecture. That connects the schools, it still does. Including now the Bourbon, there is still a connection between institutions and also probably not burdened administratively by the university. All are free standing schools, which produces very different environment at the same time. Not holding to a larger university as one of the schools but more or less free standing, also gives them huge amount of flexibility and freedom, which was clearly part of their common align. And also allow them the habit type of freedom to pursue those type of investigations and unflattered by larger institutional build, institutional limits.
GŞ: A personal question. If you don’t want to answer, don’t answer, ok? What do you think about the politics of Bush Government?
TM: George Bush… It is a sad situation in the US right now, and also embarrassing actually, for USA. I have to say, even being in the middle of the mystery. I am born in the USA.
To understand the politics of the US, you need to separate the east and the west coast and start with the middle. Between the East and the West and the middle you understand politics. It is a different world. This coast L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle are connected to the East and the cities are more cosmopolitan. And, by their nature they are more liberal and have different kinds of problems. The politics are in the middle of the country. In broad terms, it is the response in the middle of twentieth century to Roosevelt, and it is a kind of attack to liberalism of the middle part of century which is under that administration and it is a kind of attack to all of the social institutions that came out of that. Or it is a form of socialism in the US that was parallel to what is going on in here; there is a small but incredibly powerful religious conservatism which is driving political agendas and it’s not that different than what’s going on in Iran today. And also it is challenging the Darwinian Principle… It is absolutely crazy and frustrating.
Tokyo, what about it? And then, in the middle of the nineteenth century US is not a particularly intellectual place, it is a pragmatic country, it is not a philosophic place and I think because of that religion feels a gap, and for me economy is the whole function for the people whom are not educated and interested in ideas. And, we are going through this period of time which is not interested in expansion or looking at the world more realistically in terms of its problems, that it is contracting, defensive and priding… However we can not generalize this situation for every president, because there are some examples that have big brains like Wilson or Clinton, those are brilliant people, they come to be simple and common. It is obvious that Bush is not a brilliant guy, actually it is nothing new. Maybe he is the far end of the spectrum of not very brilliant and we seem to be in this huge dilemma of the Ramsfeld types, the Chenny types, who cheer the world with very black terms. Somehow we are incapable of understanding the broader historical eras of our governments. So we have an administration that is getting involved with the part of the world which they know absolutely nothing about, they are completely blind.
And, here we find ourselves in this dilemma now, which has fewer options of changing on account of this kind of tragedy of displaying of this history or this existence of very simple idea of power; military power, its ability to see the broader importance of consensus and political power. And, it is happening in social terms broad spectrum of programs which have the same kind of lack of what we talked about.
We have a vision which is telling people that Bush does not have the intelligence: it is so embarrassing that we have this kind of a president at the head of such a powerful country.
GŞ: What do the American people think? Did they change their idea?
TM: The good news is its deuce. He did not win the first election. And, the country, at this point, seems to be split; the discussion probably makes a very deep division in the country. That’s not too unusual what’s going on globally today in many cultures between the pretonia and postonia centuries; Let’s say, method of thinking with none or less. Let’s say monophobism and singular ideas in a fixed world. And, posttonia century thinking which has to do with the world as much more flexible open ending of all the system. And it seems like huge amount of the world is suffering the same dilemma. Iran is a great example actually. For instance, there are educated places and also there are huge populations like Persians, Pyreneans. The power right now is by the fundamentalism, by very powerful people. There are also huge amount of educated, liberal very cosmopolitan people.
I was in Sarajevo during fighting. And, I think it was amazing. Actually, they would say the same thing that I said, ask them what kind of place they were in, they would say: “We haven’t got a clue, we’re just here”.
Sarajevo was the cultural center of Yugoslavia, and it was extremely mixed for centuries and centuries due to the Ottoman Empire. It would be an absolute end of a pyramid of the mixing of cultures. The peaceful, the absolute, the synergistic mixture… those are all gone now because of the politicizing which even destroys the norms. Now, it will never be the same. It is like the conflicts and discussions which are going on in the US right now, but again, it’s something that is taking place in many countries. You can look at Europe; the issues are the same.
It can be religious, it can be nationalistic, but at the end they are all same people. But, maybe the interesting thing about it: it is still making very vibrate discussions in the US, which is a good thing. And, there is also some kind of a lack of response to Democratic Party which is somehow sleeping. The issue is; there is a kind of a radical re-configuration in the political states which can not be recovered from the Soviet decline. Accommodation of the end of broad social programs, which again the ending of an agenda of Democratic Party, the ending of the Soviet, the ending of the agenda of the Republican Party and the Republicans can quickly re-figure their policy into a cultural religious land where as the Democrats have kind of a configure until there is a balance. By the way there is a failure in the left to be even vaguely as efficient.
I can not listen to George Bush. It is impossible. It hurts my ears. I travel a lot of the Europe and it is embarrassing because the percentage rating again in most countries is like ninety fans. Of course, there is nobody interested. And it seems to be flying over passing through a lot of people here, how somebody like that you can make the president. You can do that, travel in the middle of the country and you will understand. You can today look at the globe. And, the differences are not between the nations and cultures. Monophisims, the differences are between city people and the world people, everywhere.
So, I could be sitting here with you and we would be talking about any number of common things which we haven’t talked about yet. I could be in Bangkok with friends, I could be in Tokyo with friends, I could be in Soho, I could be in Shanghais…
ÖK: Now the cities are gaining more importance than states, like the regions are going to be more important…
TM: It seems to be empathy and characteristics of liberalism which come out of living in a city. It makes you more understanding the differences and the types of realities that take place in the world. And the real world is still protective, it seems to be more tribal and sphere of the danger of outside cultures. Those are the oldest and the most primitive instincts of an animal. You are an animal, you see something, and you defense yourself.
ÖK: By means of communication and travel, everyone would be more tolerant because they would know that it is not a dangerous thing to see and talk to different people. And especially with internet, people start to get in touch with each other much easier and also traveling became cheaper.
TM: Huge amount of you by architecture will find the same dialog. Those could be a tail all in a cultural political liberalism, in an artistic liberalism for let’s say openness for new things, openness for inquiry, openness for questioning, and openness to look at something which is engaging and define challenging and interesting and striking. You look at a picture, and why does one person see it frightening as the other person sees it exciting? I think social act study.
Again I go back to your child; little children can see things as they are. And they see things for the properties, especially the architecture. It is not loaded with psychological data. And certain things are acceptable or not acceptable and culture says certain things are good things or bad things. You see it for what it is physically, you look at it and it could be a spaceship. School impacts that art is phenomenon, inherent in between where an adult looks at, and no longer he may see something clearly and openly. It is like oh this does not belong to my village and oh this does not belong to my culture. Just look at it and decide for yourself.
Something else taking place which is outside of your culture, because that is exactly what I just meant. I am not your mom, I am not your mayor, I am not your psychiatrist, I am an architect that operates and I come from the outside. Open up an old magazine, look at anything you want, where you think it come from, does it come from your village? No, it comes from a boutique in Milano, from a fashion designer from London or Paris or New York. All around the world you can see similar fashion, they start at one point. I do not have Tana shoes with stamps, they are in made shoes. You know the Tana shoes? A sneaker instead of laces you have the black stripes. In 1979, in the prison issues, they were taking the laces and tying them, hurting people which were heading them. All of a sudden those shoes came out of prison and become extremely popular with young people. I liked the clothes that young people wore until I ensured that those were clothes from prisons. Baggy clothes also come from prison, when you go to prison especially the Mexicans or the Spanish, they do not make clothes small enough to get their clothes off style, so when you get into prison, you are wearing big pants and big shirts. All of a sudden they go out from the prison to a cycle, a circle cycle. They go back in the community.
My son goes to a high school. All of a sudden his style turns into huge pants, enormous big shirts coming down to his knees. And, he is from a culture who is instinctively a upper middle class kid, his friends all wear gold chains. All was in Kuala Lumpur, where we worked last year. It is in Malaysia, a big modern city. And then a couple comes by, the guy was all over basketball, gold chain, sunglasses, a black band, and long baggy pants, Tana shoes… The women were all in black clothes and they were wearing Oakley sunglasses that have mirror… Here I am in the middle of the extremely conservative Muslim culture but in a big city, that comes all away from the US. It is the real world today.
Architecture can give me part of that, and so going back to your question; yes, for some people we are frightened for having people aside, but at the end, it is not my role to worry about it. I do not worry about it. I can only anticipate through my calamities, but that is not too real. The freaky ones are the more interesting ones for me as an architect. It is like making a film. If you make a film, you are just telling a story and if anything we are hoping to change somehow, mood somebody, to change somebody, with the part of world that you see. And, hopefully that is a thing that won’t be scary when you see it third time, fourth time or even fifth time. Or you see things that you have never seen before, what makes you scared the first time now actually feels quiet comfortable.
And, I think, architecture has a literal sense of a poem. In architecture there are juxtapositions. It is more essential maybe, having to do a continuity of comfort. But, those things change. You do not live in grass huts, things change. Maybe they change a little bit slower than other objects but the point is finally they become quiet comfortable, and it becomes literally, high-mashed, homier, in the deeper sense. And that takes a little bit of a time. And also, changes are self-applicant in a rapid way. You take centuries, you take a generation for that and then you look at a city center this way. There are so many questions which I answered yesterday in this city and in this architectural utopia. One generation decides that there is the shift and I understand that shift, it does not take three or four generation. This is what happened to multi-nationalistic countries. I had read in an article, this is including L.A.; there is a big issue in US at the moment which is concerning Mexico about immigrants coming from the border illegally…
GŞ: Ok, thank you very much for your time.
TM: It was my pleasure…