Morphosis Out from Grand Ave Team

By Eric Richardson
Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2005, at 05:00PM

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Architectural Record News today reports that Thom Mayne’s firm Morphosis is off the Grand Ave team.

It was after spending time reviewing initial concepts, as well as comments from public and team meetings that Related came to the conclusion that Morphosis wasn’t the appropriate fit for them.

“Not every architect is right for every project,” says Witte, adding, “but we are pleased for Thom, for winning the Prizker Prize.”

I’m not Mayne’s biggest fan, but he does have a track record of being able to get public projects done on a small budget. My mind immediately wants to connect this back to the Mayne interview I wrote about last year:

The average person’s understanding of his projects is “irrelevant,” he told me. “There’s layers and layers of ideas that go into a piece of work. It can be engaged at many levels. Probably most people are engaged at a very direct level: how it affects them. Others will recognize that there’s an organizational or conceptual tissue.”

It’s good for the average person to at least like a building.



Comments

1
Brady Westwater writes:

Thom’s being dropped is old news - it was done months ago. Related spent a lot of time - and money - trying to get him to understand what they needed, but Mayne just could not produce pedestrain friendly designs. He is still in his art object sitting on a pedestal phase. Frank Gehry, however, will do a much better job now that he has moved past that phase himself.

# on Apr.20.2005 AT 09:37 PM
2
Eric Richardson writes:

Ah, good to know I’m just behind on hearing things. -e;

# on Apr.20.2005 AT 10:32 PM
3
Connie writes:

I sure hope the person quoted below doesn’t end up dominating the project, and as far as I know Related still considers his firm to be the lead designer:

—-> DAVID M. CHILDS of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill may be the most powerful architect in New York. But not even he considers the majority of his buildings first-rate architecture.

“I know a lot of what I’ve designed is not ‘A’ work,” he said recently over lunch. “But my role was different. I wanted to raise the level of everyday development as much as I could.” <——

# on Apr.20.2005 AT 11:10 PM

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