The smaller group

“I hold a cup in my class and say we are going to redesign this, and most students immediately start to work with the shape, but smaller group will ask questions like; how many of these cups are needed every year? How many times is each cup used? How many cubic yards they will take in the garbage dump after they are tossed out? How quickly they will decompose?
That is where I am moving into right now. I am more into that smaller group where they ask these questions, which is also my nature. I always ask questions. We all start as formal designers, we start asking questions, as to who we are as architects, but the questions are changing as our office culture is changing. Again, architecture is nothing more than how you articulate questions and questions you choose to address. Because you cannot address all the questions, it is really, about which ones you choose to address. People think of architecture as form and language, but it is not that at all. The ones are asking formal questions are doing architecture just at that level and they are not asking other questions, right?”

Thom Mayne em entrevista à Archinect durante uma pausa para o café.

Thom Mayne in “Coffee-Break”, via Archinect.