A Conversation With Thom Mayne, Joe Day, Hitoshi Abe and Qingyun Ma (The Conversation portion starts at the 30-minute mark) Thom Mayne '69, FAIA founded Morphosis as an interdisciplinary and collective practice involved in experimental design and research in 1972. Mr. Mayne is co-founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture and Distinguished Professor at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design. Mayne's distinguished honors include the Pritzker Prize (2005) and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal (2013). He was appointed to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2009. With Morphosis, Thom Mayne has been the recipient of 25 Progressive Architecture Awards, over 100 American Institute of Architecture Awards and numerous other design recognitions. Morphosis works have been published extensively. The firm has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and 25 monographs. Joe Day is a designer and architectural theorist in Los Angeles, where he leads Deegan-Day Design, LLA and serves on the design and history/theory faculty at SCI-Arc. In both his design and writing, Day examines the intersections of contemporary art, urbanism and architecture as visual disciplines. In addition to frequent publication of his design work, Day's critical writing has been featured in journals including Architecture magazine, Interior Design, LoudPaper, Deutsche Bauzeitung and Architecture and Urbanism in Latin America, as well as in surveys including Sessions (SCI-Arc, 2005) and Evil Paradises (New Press, 2007). He edited an AIA Award-winning monograph of Frank Israel (Rizzoli, 1992) and contributed an additional forward to the 2009 edition of Reyner Banham's seminal study, Los Angeles: Architecture of the Four Ecologies (University of California Press, 2009). In the spring of 2012, he taught at Yale School of Architecture as the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Chair. Day's recent Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime (Routledge Press, 2013), explores new polarities in contemporary architecture and urbanism. Hitoshi Abe is the Chair of the Architecture & Urban Design department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1992, when Dr. Hitoshi Abe won first prize in the Miyagi Stadium competition, he has maintained an active international design practice based in Sendai, Japan, and Los Angeles. Known for architecture that is spatially complex and structurally innovative, the work of Atelier Hitoshi Abe has been published internationally and received numerous awards both in Japan and internationally, including the 2011 Japan Society for Finishing Technology Award for the F-town building, 2009 Contractworld Award for Aoba-tei, 2009 Architectural Institute of Japan Award for the K-Museum, 2009 the Architectural Institute of Japan Education Award and the 2008 SIA-Getz Prize for Emergent Architecture in Asia. Qingyun Ma is a designer and educator. Named one of the world's most influential designers by BusinessWeek, Ma's experience and involvement on an international level make him a leader in the design community with a great understanding of the contemporary issues in global urbanization. Through his academic and professional experience, he developed a keen business sense centered on design intelligence, which culminated in his establishment of MADA s.p.a.m in 1996. MADA s.p.a.m. has designed and built modern buildings and urban communities, garnering worldwide recognition. Ma was the chief curator of the 2007 Shenzhen Hong Kong Biennale, and he is frequently invited as a speaker and juror, including for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the prestigious Rome Prize, and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. In 2007, Ma became the dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, where he has enhanced the program by developing the School's ties with China and launching a number of global initiatives, particularly the USC American Academy in China, a base for visiting scholars to facilitate their research and foster academic exchange.

• published: 21 Nov 2013
• views: 909