Thom Mayne: That’s an Interesting Question

Thom Mayne is the founding partner of Morphosis, an interdisciplinary and collective architecture and planning practice established in 1972. Mayne’s distinguished honors include the Pritzker Prize (2005) and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal (2013). He served on the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities from 2009–2016. In 1972, he co-founded the Southern California Institute of Architecture, where he continues to lead the NOW Institute, a graduate-level thinktank for urban sustainability and resilience. Mayne has held teaching positions at Columbia, Yale, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, and the University of Pennsylvania. Recent publications include Strange Networks (2020, Rizzoli), a monograph highlighting his exploration of combinatory systems, and M³ (2023, Rizzoli), a survey of fifty years of models at Morphosis. This investigation continues at Stray Dog Café, Mayne’s personal art and research space at Morphosis, where he leads a team of young designers and students on research projects, the creation of artworks, and the development of publications that document their creative output. SFMOMA, MoMA, and The Art Institute of Chicago, among others, hold artworks produced throughout his career.